


Faster Than a Speeding Bentley

by nightbloomingcereus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: All the Superhero Tropes, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Humor, Love Triangle (sort of), M/M, Minor Violence, Pining, Secret Identity, Slow Burn, as a treat, doesn't mean he can't still shoot himself in the foot occasionally, handwavey snakebite-induced superpowers, just because Crowley's got superpowers, the sunglasses are the disguise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 72,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24811489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/pseuds/nightbloomingcereus
Summary: A mysterious explosion. An intrepid reporter who asks too many questions.  A bite from a small, seemingly innocuous garter snake.  You know the drill.But Anthony J. Crowley soon finds out that being a superhero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Sure, there are benefits: being able to slither up the sides of buildings, doing really weird things with his tongue, the occasional lucrative stock tip from a grateful rescuee, and gloating over the fact that a simple pair of sunglasses is an apparently impenetrable disguise.  On the other hand, there’s the sheer indignity of spandex, a succession of increasingly terrible monikers, and the fact that he keeps making a fool of himself in front of the love of his life, who, for some reason, seems to keep getting kidnapped.  And to add insult to injury, said love of his life might just be in love with his alter ego.It isn’t easy being The Serpent.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 564
Kudos: 371
Collections: Good AUmens AU Fest





	1. Prologue: Blood and secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Good AUmens AU fest. All my gratitude and love to the lovely people of the GO-events discord, who were an endless source of support, ideas, cheerleading, and hilarity. I love you all.
> 
> cw: This fic has, as you might expect, some mild violence and occasional mentions of blood and injuries, typical of what you might find in a lighter superhero movie or comic book.

"Oi, Crawly! Have you heard?" called Hastur, as Crowley sauntered into the newsroom on Monday morning. "SuperSnake's at it again. Saved a bloke last night who was getting beat up behind some club downtown. If you ask me, fellow was asking for it, hanging out at them skeevy clubs."

"It's _The Serpent_ , dammit," hissed Crowley under his breath. Louder, he said, "I have it on good authority that the victim was being harassed, Hastur. And where and with whom he chooses to spend his time has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Don’t be an ass."

"Police report says they found blood at the scene. And get this – it's _not human_."

"What is it then? Aardvark?"

"Said they couldn't tell. Best guess was some kind of weird snake."

"Huh. Interesting," said Crowley noncommittally. 

"God, what I wouldn't give to get an interview with that fucker. Nobody's ever been able to pin him down for one. Slippery bastard."

 _In your dreams_ , thought Crowley. "Good luck with that, mate."

Hastur leered at him, and Crowley seethed. Behind the impenetrable dark of his sunglasses, the gold of his irises expanded, swallowing all of the white.

"What the fuck happened to your face, Crawly?"

For a brief, panicked moment, he thought that Hastur had seen his eyes, but the disguise, in all its blatant simplicity, held, as it had for the last ten years.

"For the hundredth time, it's _Crowley_ , and I _know_ you know that."

"You get in a fight or something?"

"Oh, this?" asked Crowley nonchalantly, indicating the two-inch-long, scabbed-over gash that traced a livid path down the side of his right cheek, beginning below the dark lens of the ever-present sunglasses and ending near the tail of the twisting snake tattoo beneath his ear. "Fell. Off a wall." 

It wasn't, strictly speaking, a lie. 

"Maybe you ought to find a different hobby, man," sneered Hastur. "Don't seem like you're too good at rock climbing."

The best secrets were mostly true, and Crowley was nothing if not an expert at secrets. He _had_ actually lost concentration and fallen off a wall last night, but it was not located in a gym, with harnesses and foam padding and spotters to save him in case of a fall. No, the wall in question had been made of crumbling brick and comprised one side of the exterior of the dilapidated warehouse behind the club, with nothing but unforgiving, hard concrete pavement at the bottom. He had, luckily, managed to catch himself on a window ledge after falling ten feet or so, but not before scraping the soft, exposed flesh of his face across a jagged, protruding bit of mortar. 

It had been worth it, though, to be able to drop down silently behind the would-be assailant, who had been scared satisfyingly shitless by the sight of his yellow snake eyes flashing, right before he'd brought the tire iron down on the man's head with inhuman speed. 

Hastur shut up and turned away to grumble something to Ligur, probably complaining about how Crowley was never any fun.

He stuck his tongue out at Hastur's back, stretching it out a little more than was strictly humanly possible. The gesture made the wound on his cheek pop and sting, and he grimaced, certain that it had re-opened. From his desk on the far side of the room, Aziraphale shot him a brief, sympathetic look, his heat signature flickering just a tiny bit brighter than all of the others around him, and then just as quickly turned his gaze away to stare determinedly ahead at his monitor. 

Crowley made his way to the loo, which was empty, and stood at the counter examining his face in the mirror. The cut had indeed opened up again, and was lazily oozing blood. He was dabbing at it with a damp paper towel when the door opened quietly and someone came to stand beside him. 

"Are you quite sure you're all right, Crowley? Good lord, that must've been some fall."

"I'm fine, angel."

"Oh, here, let me," said Aziraphale gently, taking the towel from his unresisting hand. He leaned in and swiped it gently over the gash on Crowley's cheek. The cut stung, but he barely noticed, because the pads of Aziraphale's fingers, radiating heat, were millimeters from his skin. His face, eyes squinted and mouth slightly pursed in concentration, was not much further away. Warm, steady breaths flitted across the line of Crowley's jaw and tickled the spot behind his earlobe where his serpentine vibration detection was most sensitive. Neither of them spoke for nearly a minute. 

Aziraphale's hand abruptly dropped away, and he turned his head to face forward. They stood side by side at the counter, both very carefully staring directly ahead at their contrasting reflections in the mirror. Crowley, all sharp bones and fiery hair, dark glasses hiding all of his secrets; Aziraphale, all soft curves and fluffy, white-gold curls, his ocean-water eyes full of concern.

"Are you sure that doesn't need stitches?" asked Aziraphale, examining the red-spotted towel in his hand. 

"It looks worse than it is. Promise. It'll be gone in a few days. Won't even scar." 

An ordinary human would probably have required a dozen stitches or more, and would have been left with a vicious scar, but that was not something he could say aloud, not even to Aziraphale.

"All right. If you're sure. You'd look quite dashing with a scar though, I think."

"Yeah, yeah. Dashing and mysterious, that's me. Library tomorrow at noon? I've got another puzzle I could use your help with."

"Of course. And I'll be requiring a dining companion on Sunday night for a new Italian place I'm supposed to review. Their specialty is apparently Roman cuisine. I hear they do remarkable things with oysters."

"I'll be there. Just let me know the place and time."

Aziraphale washed his hands and departed. Just before he pushed the door open, he turned and favored Crowley with a tiny, soft smile.

"Do take care of yourself, dear. I worry, you know."

And then the door swung shut and he was gone, his steady, measured footfalls growing fainter with each step, in both Crowley's human hearing and in the low-frequency vibrations shivering through his mandible. There was no one else outside, no vibrations or heat signatures closer than the bustling main newsroom at the end of the hall. Crowley took off his sunglasses. He looked at his face in the mirror, at all of the individual things that formed an incongruous, secret whole: the gash across his face, the snake tattoo, the swoop of flame-red hair, the sharp cut of his jaw, the sardonic mouth, the golden, slit-pupiled eyes that were normally hidden behind dark lenses. There were dark circles under his eyes; really, it was unfair that his employers expected him to show his face in the office at nine in the morning when he'd been out until three a.m. the previous night, patrolling the rooftops and streets. 

He watched the almonds of his pupils close off into knife-thin slits. The irises were acid yellow in the harsh fluorescent light. He had wanted very badly, just then, to bare his eyes and his secrets to Aziraphale, to say _this is me, all of me, the whole package, human and inhuman, snake eyes and all._ It was so often like that these days, when he was with Aziraphale.

He sighed and replaced the sunglasses. When he casually sauntered out from the restroom, he very carefully did not look in Aziraphale's direction, did not smile at him, did not ask him for the time of day. They were Not Friends, after all, just colleagues who had an Arrangement. He was a serious investigative reporter, and Aziraphale wrote for the _lifestyle_ section. It wasn't like their paths ever crossed outside of work. It wasn't like he was in love with Aziraphale or anything. 

Crowley was an expert at keeping secrets: he had kept his alter ego and his unnatural powers hidden for ten long years. Aziraphale was secretly his best friend. These things were worth his entire life, but, of all his secrets, it was the fact that he was in love with Aziraphale that was the dearest secret of all.


	2. The origin of secrets

_Ten years earlier_

Anthony J. Crowley, freelance reporter, had always been too curious for his own good. He'd spent his entire life sneaking into interesting places where he wasn't supposed to be, poking his nose into intriguing business, and following leads down increasingly strange rabbit holes. There was never a mystery that he didn't want to solve, never a secret he didn't want to uncover. Sometimes this led him on nothing more than a wild goose chase, but on occasion it netted him the story of a lifetime. And sometimes it changed his life. 

It was nearing midnight on an idle, low-energy Friday night at the end of a long and frustrating week full of tedious interviews and boring research for an increasingly pointless story. Crowley had been sitting in his dumpy flat, halfheartedly weighing the pros and cons of going out and getting plastered for the rest of the evening (and possibly some of the following morning). The prospect of having to put on trousers to do so was daunting. He had just made the decision to go to bed instead and sleep for twelve hours, when the police scanner he'd not-entirely-legally installed on his phone began buzzing with frenetic activity. 

There had been some sort of massive explosion in New Eden's warehouse district, down by the docks. The reports were conflicting, and frantic, and unclear. It was either a bomb or an accidental chemical spill or some kind of illegal drug-cooking operation gone wrong - something hazmat, at any rate, dangerous and almost certainly very, very off-limits. Crowley felt suddenly and vigorously awake, all traces of his earlier lassitude burned away in a white-hot flare of anticipation. _This_ was worth putting on trousers for. He could practically see the yellow caution tape, the police barricades, the bright red do-not-enter signs, the dire "civilians beware" warnings; this was his catnip, tantalizing and irresistible. Besides, there was always the chance, not to be missed, that he'd break a big story and be able to sell it to the _Times_ or the _Observer_ , both of which paid far better than the kind of alternative, free papers that usually ran his stories and derived most of their meager budget from running slightly suspect personal ads. 

The warehouse district was almost entirely devoid of people and activity this late at night. The buildings were shuttered and padlocked, and a row of enormous cargo ships loomed dark and quiescent in the harbor. Lights shone in the dusty windows of a few isolated, outwardly dilapidated structures. The all-night underground raves that had always taken place in this run-down, industrial neighborhood had recently been joined by a handful of discreet, members-only clubs and speakeasies, but as a whole the area was a ghost town. (A blessing tonight: the building that had exploded had by all accounts been unoccupied.) A plume of smoke, thick and opaque with an odd silver-blue halo, was visible from nearly a mile away, rising over the docks and low rooftops; a heavy pall of it had settled over the water like a too-dense, eerie fog. 

Crowley was forced to park his car two blocks away, as police barriers had already been set up to block off the street, and make the rest of his way on foot. His senses were immediately assaulted by an acrid blast of tarry, phenolic air, which made his eyes and nostrils sting and irritated the back of his throat. 

The area at the front of the building, facing the street, bustled with activity. The police had installed a number of high-powered portable spotlights that flooded the area with bright white light, and rapidly flashing beams of red and blue and white pulsed from atop the fleet of fire and police vehicles. Squads of firemen bearing hoses and axes were busy putting out last of the flames, adding plumes of white steam to the smoke and haze already heavy in the air. Here and there, a few embers still smoldered defiantly, glowing a dull orange-red within the dark piles of rubble. The shouting voices of many people at once combined with the shrill squeals of several sets of approaching sirens, the rumbling hiss of the firehoses, and the occasional crack and thud of falling debris to produce a loud, frenetic cacophony. 

A large portion of the front wall of the wide, single-story warehouse appeared to have been blown clear out, and numerous pieces of splintered wood, bits of shredded insulation, and small fragments of shattered glass lay strewn around the area. The blast radius seemed to extend well into the street, testifying to the propulsive strength of the explosion. 

Crowley recognized the distinctive short stature, spiky hair, and signature combat boots of Beelzebub Prince, the _Times'_ star reporter, near the center of the activity. Everyone in the business knew that Prince was a shoo-in to be the paper's next Editor-in-Chief, and if they were here, it meant that Crowley's instincts had been correct. This _was_ going to be a big story. 

Nearby, a tall, handsome man was talking to the fire chief, who was saying something vague about a possible explosive reaction between incompatible chemicals. This reporter was impeccably dressed in a perfectly-tailored dove-grey suit and shiny shoes, despite the midnight hour. Crowley recognized him too - his name was Gabriel something-or-other, he wrote for the _Observer_ , and he had quite frankly been insufferably arrogant the one time they'd met at an industry event. 

_Well, damn_ , thought Crowley as he watched Prince brush past Gabriel, very deliberately not acknowledging his presence. _There goes my scoop._ If both of those two were already on the scene, then there was almost zero chance that he'd be able to sell this story to either of their employers. He was on cordial terms with Prince at least, but there was zero chance they'd be willing to share their byline or their scoop with anyone, much less a nobody freelancer. 

Anthony J. Crowley had always been too curious for his own good, tenacious to a fault, and too fond of defying authority in any way that he could. He was also maybe, just maybe, a little bit reckless. Things like police barricades and signs loudly proclaiming _danger, do not enter_ promised forbidden knowledge and dared him to breach them. If he could get his hands on some inside intel or find a unique angle, then he might have a chance to salvage his story.

He slipped around to the back of the building, skirting chunks of wreckage and ducking underneath several crisscrossing layers of yellow-and-black striped hazard tape. The police had apparently been through already, as evidenced by the presence of the tape, but the area was currently devoid of any other people, everyone being more focused on the active fires and impressively extensive destruction in the front.

There was far less damage on this side, although a part of the exterior brick wall had nevertheless collapsed, revealing a large, dark room behind. The concrete floor inside was strewn with chunks of debris, some of it charred and still smoking. Portions of the roof had fallen in, and the room was faintly illuminated by an eerie orange glow reflected from the smoky clouds overhead. The air was hazy with dust and ash, and the sickly sweet, chemical undertone to the burnt smell was much more pronounced here, settling unpleasantly at the back of his nose and throat. He pulled the neckline of his henley up over his mouth and held it there with one hand; breathing through it was an improvement, if only a small one. 

In one of the far corners of the room, there were a pile of what looked to be a half dozen small wire cages, their fine metal mesh twisted and bent out of shape by the force of the blast. Crowley pulled a small, powerful torch from his pocket and switched it on, then gingerly picked his way over the piles of rubble to examine the cages more closely. In one or two of them lay several small white mice, unnaturally still and stiff and very dead. The remaining cages were empty, their doors swinging haphazardly ajar from broken hinges.

A laboratory of some sort perhaps. Perhaps the rumors of a drug processing operation were true, although it did not really explain why they needed mice to experiment on. He swept the beam of his torch across the rest of the room. It was spacious, and, aside from the piles of rubble from the collapsed wall and roof, surprisingly empty. There were none of the broken bottles or crucibles or burners or measuring implements that he would have expected from a working lab, a meth-cooking one or otherwise, nor were there food wrappers or discarded coffee cups or bits of paper or any other sign of human presence. There were only some plain, bare metal tables, a fair number of mostly-empty rusted scaffold shelves lining the walls, and the pile of cages in the corner.

 _This is how horror movies start_ , he thought in a moment of panic. But no. That was ridiculous. This was real life, not a movie, and there were no zombies or axe murderers lurking in the shadows. No point in letting his imagination get the best of him.

Even so, he jumped when he saw a flicker of movement, a hint of something slinking underneath one of the tables and toward a mound of rubble by the far wall. Thankfully, it was low to the ground and far too small to be a zombie or axe murderer. He thought for a moment that it might have been one of the small white lab mice that had escaped when the cages blew open, but whatever he had glimpsed out of the corner of his eye had been somehow too dark, too fluid, too graceful, to be a fearful rodent running with darting, abbreviated, stuttering motions. Switching his torch off and shoving it halfway in his back pocket, he slowly made his way toward the pile of debris, which consisted primarily of splintered wooden beams and crumbled masonry, sprinkled with broken light fixtures and bits of singed electrical wiring. There was a strong smell of burnt metal, underlaid with an unpleasant, mephitic note of something vaguely sulfurous. 

In the dim light, Crowley saw two yellow eyes, with large, elongated, dark pupils, peeking out at him from beneath a large, twisted piece of metal. The luminous eyes belonged to a tiny black snake, no more than a foot in length and narrower around than his thumb, with pale stripes running the length of its body. He sat back on his haunches and stretched his left hand out, keeping his movements slow and smooth. The snake looked at him curiously, rapidly flicking its red-tipped tongue this way and that, and slithered hesitantly out from its hiding place.

Crowley was not afraid of snakes. On the contrary, he liked them a great deal, so much so that he had done quite a bit of research into snake species, thinking that he might like to have one as a pet one day. He even had a stylized snake tattooed below his right ear; although it had technically been the consequence of an impulsive, alcohol-soaked night back in his university days, he had never actually regretted that decision. 

He'd done his research, and so he knew that the animal slithering cautiously out toward his outstretched hand was a common garter snake, non-venomous and the most harmless and docile of reptiles. They were common in the countryside around New Eden, and it was not unheard of that on occasion one would be spotted in more urban surroundings. It would not be sporting, he thought, to leave a harmless creature here in this building that was liable to fall down at any moment, full of noxious chemicals and electrical hazards and things possibly still on fire.

The snake bumped its head against his fingers, and slithered up them onto his upturned hand. Coiled up, its entire body fit snugly in his palm; it was heavy for its size and surprisingly warm, like it had been resting on something that had still been suffused with residual heat from the fire. Its tongue tickled the pulse point at his wrist. Crowley smiled at it, charmed. He really did like snakes, and perhaps this little one wanted to come home with him. 

And then, without warning, the creature sunk its fangs into his wrist. There was a brief, sharp stab of pain, even though the tiny snake had correspondingly tiny fangs. He yelped with surprise and dropped the snake. It landed on the ground, apparently unhurt, and darted away beneath the pile of refuse. 

Gingerly, he groped for his torch with his right hand, flicked it on, and shone the light on his injured wrist, wincing at the sudden brightness. There were two small droplets of coagulating blood where the fangs had gone in, but when he brushed them away with his thumb the bite marks were barely visible, only a pair of tiny pink pinpricks against blue veins and pale skin. The pain had already dissipated almost completely, and there did not appear to be any swelling or heat at the site. 

He was ninety-nine percent sure that garter snakes were non-venomous. And all of the snakes native to the country were harmless, although occasionally some idiot tried to import a cobra as an exotic pet. But it _had_ been rather warm. Snakes couldn't get rabies, could they? 

Crowley cursed aloud and shook his head vigorously, as if by doing so he could clear out his spiraling thoughts. He was being ridiculous and overly dramatic again. The most likely explanation was that the snake was just an opportunistic predator who had noticed the door wide open, smelled some mice, and come in for a midnight snack. He couldn't really blame it for getting spooked at the appearance of a human that was many times its size. 

The adrenaline rush that had been sustaining him for the past hour drained away all at once, leaving his knees and hips feeling like jelly. A cold wave of exhaustion settled heavily over him. He rubbed at his eyes, which were burning from the soot and fumes in the air. Spots of bright light appeared, hovering white and red in the corners of his vision like afterimages of the strobing police and fire lights outside _._ They floated around distractingly, their paths crossing and uncrossing. Closing his eyes did not help. 

The snake seemed to have vanished, there was nothing else of interest in the barren room, and both of the doors leading into the rest of the building were impenetrably blocked by massive piles of collapsed beams and bricks. An empty room, a few dead mice, and an oddly aggressive small snake were intriguing, but not the makings of a serious piece of investigative journalism. He could still hear the sounds of the investigation going on outside: the murmur of voices, the low buzz of idling engines, the occasional whoop of a new siren in the distance. The concrete floor beneath his feet seemed to be vibrating slightly, making him wonder about the structural stability of the damaged building; it was definitely high time to get out of there. 

Outside, the spill of the high beams and floodlights was far too sudden and far too bright, and the sounds of the shouted commands and thumping footsteps and buzzing radios far too loud. Through some trick of the light and the unsettled dust in the air, every person looked like they were ringed with some kind of hazy red-gold halo. The last fires had been extinguished, although the air was still thick with lingering, mephitic fumes that irritated his eyes and left an ashy, metallic taste in his mouth. It smelled overwhelmingly of sulfur and ozone, much more so than he remembered from before. Crowley slunk away from the scene, unnoticed, and stumbled back to his car, nearly running in his sudden, urgent desperation to get away from the place. 

Back home, he made a beeline for the bathroom, feeling inhumanly dirty and desperate for a hot shower. He was covered with dust and soot and grime and smelled like a horrific combination of bonfire and rotten eggs and scorched plastic. His eyes felt like they were full of grit, his ears were ringing, and his mouth tasted like he'd crunched his way through several very dirty copper pennies followed by a handful of charcoal briquettes. His hip joints still felt loose and too-flexible, his legs not entirely grounded, and his neck and jaw tense and jittery, as though he'd been clenching his teeth all evening. At least the strange bright flashes in his vision had mostly gone away, and the puncture marks on his wrist had apparently vanished, leaving behind no evidence of the snakebite. He stripped off his ruined, sooty clothes, pitched them in the corner to deal with (or possibly just burn) later, and turned on the shower. The water took forever to warm up; in the meantime, he picked up his toothbrush to scrub the disgustingly bitter taste out of his mouth. As he reached for the toothpaste, he caught sight of his own reflection in the vanity mirror. 

The toothbrush fell, forgotten, out of his hand, clattering noisily against the porcelain of the sink. 

His face was a disaster, haggard and streaked with sweat and soot, but he did not notice, because staring back at him in the mirror were a pair of luminous golden eyes, wide with shock and slashed down the middle with long, vertical pupils.


	3. Learning to slither

The water had been running for five, perhaps ten, minutes while Crowley stared dumbly at himself in the mirror; it was only when the glass fogged over completely that he recalled where he was. He stumbled into the shower and scrubbed his body raw and red with soap and nearly-scalding water, as if, given sufficient effort and cleaning products, he could scour the impossibility of his eyes right out of his head, watch them run in a sulfurous yellow swirl down the drain along with the soot and dust.

Yet even after all that, they were still there in the mirror, as bizarrely serpentine as before. He exhaled heavily, through his mouth; it sounded disconcertingly hissy.

If Crowley had his way, he would have slept that first night for a hundred years. If he was going to wake up all vertebrae and no limbs, he would much rather be unconscious for the transformation process, which could not be anything but unpleasant. And if he was about to shuffle off his mortal coil due to some sort of slow-acting venom — well, the least painful route would probably be to do so obliviously, in his sleep.

But, alas, it was not to be. He could not, try as he might, fall asleep. The drone of the air conditioner, normally so much white noise, was amplified, rattling and reverberating in what he thought was his inner ear or possibly some empty chamber of his brain. The sound of every car passing by on the street below sent shuddering vibrations down the line of his jaw and into his teeth. He'd never been more aware in his life of the Doppler Effect. He felt jittery and paranoid and only marginally sane, like he'd spent seventy-two straight hours awake and then drunk far too many straight shots of espresso to compensate. He tossed and turned all night, anxiously groping in the dark for the human contours of his body, the knuckles and elbows and kneecaps that he'd always thought were too bony and protuberant but which now comforted him by virtue of their mere existence. His fingertips skittered fretfully against his side, feeling the comforting prominences and dips of his twelve human ribs, the reassuringly flat wings of his two human hipbones.

Eventually, the sunrise light began to creep, orange and unnecessarily bright, through the slits in the blinds. It had been a scant four hours since he'd gone to bed, but felt like an eternity. He gave up on sleep entirely and decided it was better to know, once and for all, whether any more of him had gone slithery or scaled. At the very least, he still seemed to have two working legs, although they felt rubbery and loose and slightly buoyant, like he'd just gotten out of the pool after a long swim.

His eyes were just as golden and slit-pupiled as they had been the night before, but, on a more promising note, he was still breathing, capable of human speech, and in possession of all of his proper appendages. He had fingers, and toes, and ears. (Did snakes have ears? He wasn't really sure, but they sure as hell weren't on the outside. Or ear-shaped, for that matter.) He was inordinately happy to see the reddish haze of stubble just beginning to show on his chin and jawline. As far as he knew, there was no snake on earth that could grow hair. ( _Well, you might well be the first_ , said an unhelpful and cynical voice in his head.) His bare feet, under the harsh fluorescent light, looked alarmingly scaly, but upon closer inspection, he determined that perhaps he just needed to be more vigilant about moisturizing.

He remained holed up in his flat for several days, avoiding other people, his responsibilities, and the world in general. For a good deal of this time, he alternated between laying in bed staring at the ceiling, trying to tune out the suddenly cacophonous noises of everyday life, and staring at himself in the streaky bathroom mirror. He had a near-constant tension headache. The smallest noises – a car horn blaring insistently in the distance, a dog barking on the sidewalk below, someone's phone ringing in the flat next door – set his teeth on edge. He would suddenly startle awake after one or two hours of fitful sleep and stumble to the mirror, anxiously counting and cataloguing his physical features. _Hair in all the hairy places, check. Skin and not scales, check. Ten fingers, ten toes, check. Thirty-two teeth, check. Two arms, two legs, zero tails, check._

Crowley had always asked too many questions, and the current situation was no exception. Had his spine always been that long? Had his eyeteeth always been that pointy? Was that just a random itch, or was he about to shed his skin? Would it slough off to reveal more of the same underneath, or would there be a vast expanse of scales, gleaming blue-black and faceted? Was a temperature of ninety-seven-point-seven degrees still within the acceptable range of warm-blooded? 

At what point did a man become a snake, or a snake become a man?

He tried to distract himself with research, with mixed results. On the one hand, it was heartening to ascertain that the little snake that had bitten him was, without a doubt, non-venomous. On the other hand, it was both extremely diverting and highly disconcerting to learn about the reproductive organs of snakes, a discovery that prompted the addition of an entry for _one cock, unretractable,_ to his litany of body parts. (He was vaguely aware that this was basically the _help-I-think-I-might-be-turning-into-a-snake_ equivalent of using Dr. Google to diagnose your symptoms. In other words, probably not the best idea if one was prone to anxiety and catastrophizing. But he just couldn't help himself, and besides, it wasn't like he had a lot of other options. He hadn't yet fallen to the level of desperation or indignity required to call the zoo and ask to speak to a herpetologist.)

He also made an attempt to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the explosion, but his investigation went nowhere. The warehouse, which had stood empty for years, was owned by Panoptic Industries, but that fact was not particularly informative, as they owned at least ten percent of the city outright, and were shadow partners in at least a dozen more corporations and conglomerates. Panoptic had their fingers in everything, including pharmaceuticals and defense, but in this particular case everything seemed to be legit. They appeared to have nothing more than a financial interest, and there was certainly no reason to suspect they were involved with illicit animal experimentation, secret laboratories, or any other suspicious activity. 

The official report on the explosion, when it was finally released several days later, was terse and unhelpful, and concluded that it was an accident most likely caused by an "electrical wiring fault". There was no mention of chemicals, even though it had been patently obvious to everyone involved that something more noxious than building materials had been burning that night. Panoptic wrote the building off as a loss and did not attempt to make any insurance claims, so the investigation was declared closed. Crowley did not believe the official explanation in the least, but neither did he have any real evidence beyond his own instincts and the ranting of crazed conspiracy theorists on the internet, most of whom seemed to favor the theory that the incident was a harbinger of an imminent apocalypse. 

Both Beelzebub Prince at the _Times_ and Gabriel Hornblower at the _Observer_ had published articles the morning after the explosion, as he'd expected, as well as several follow-up reports that were openly skeptical of the official explanation. Neither, however, appeared to have learned anything more than Crowley already knew, and eventually the story died out on its own. 

Nowhere did anyone mention snakes, or people developing strange, impossible abilities. 

Some things, perhaps, were just destined to be ineffable. 

* * *

When a week had passed and Crowley had not yet been reduced to a pile of coils and appetite hissing on the bedroom floor, he ventured into the outside world for the first time in a week. During a bout of stress cleaning (which had gone poorly, given that he swore he could _taste_ the horrendous, chemical-citrus fragrance of the cleaning products), he had unearthed a pair of flashy caged sunglasses. He vaguely remembered buying them what felt like a lifetime ago, back in the days when his biggest concern had been whether mirrored sunglasses made him look like he was trying too hard. They _were_ a bit ostentatious, even for him, but they were also, crucially, dark and reflective enough to conceal the oddity of his eyes. And he had to admit they _did_ look pretty cool; his former self might have been a blithe, happy fool who didn't know how good his normal human life was, but at least he'd had style. 

On that first afternoon, he lasted only until the end of the block, five minutes at most. The sudden sensory overload was immense and overwhelming, almost hallucinatory. The everyday sounds of the world – the chatter of voices, the roar of engines, the insistent chirping of birds – assaulted him from all directions. The ground felt unsteady, like it was pulsing or vibrating, under his feet. His entire head felt like it had been split open and subsequently colonized by a swarm of angry bees. Every person he encountered (and the dogs at their heels, the squirrels up in the trees, even the rats in the subway grates) was surrounded with a luminous, hazy, orange-red aura. Every sound had a buzzy echo, every smell had an aftertaste at the back of his tongue. The world was a dizzying mess of light and noise and movement, and trying to resolve all of it into something understandable gave him an instant, splitting headache.

Thankfully, he found that his tolerance for these things increased with time and exposure; he was able to handle longer and longer stints outside with each subsequent attempt. His actual human vision and hearing were more or less unchanged, something that he realized only once his brain had learned how to separate out the new and different sources of sensory input. Vibrations gathered at a point in his head near the hinge of his jaw, and varied in frequency depending on their source: speech, transmitted through the air, was high and bright, while footsteps, transmitted through the earth, were low and rhythmic. He developed a new and immense hatred for car alarms, with their abbreviated, irregular, off-pitch whoops, and he knew every time anyone within a block accidentally set off their smoke detector. 

The aura around people and animals was a heat signature of some sort. A visit to a pet store confirmed that only warm-blooded creatures had them, as the fish and, amusingly, snakes on display did not light up at all. He could detect them even without a line of sight; they manifested as floating, fuzzy spots of brightness in his vision through walls and other solid obstacles. With a lot of trial and error, and surreptitious practice in crowded shopping malls and busy streets and noisy clubs, Crowley found that he could even pick out and follow individual signatures within a sea of others. The furthest range of this sense was about twenty meters or so; this was a much greater range than an _actual_ snake was capable of, a fact which brought him a great deal of smug satisfaction.

After a while, he learned how to ignore the majority of these sensations, the way humans learn how to tune out baseline white noise from a young age, and to instinctively pick out only the things that were important or different. He thought that he would feel something akin to blind or deaf now, were these new forms of awareness to suddenly disappear again. It was surprising how adaptable the human body was, although he was beginning to have doubts as to how human his body currently was.

* * *

To Crowley's relief, no scales or extra rows of teeth ever appeared, and he had not lost any appendages or grown a second of one particular one. It was unlikely, then, that he was actually turning wholesale into a snake. Instead, he merely seemed to have acquired a number of snake-like attributes. 

His uncanny eyes, blatantly obvious though they were, remained the only visible physical evidence of the changes. Their long, slit pupils could not possibly be mistaken for human, and the luminous golden irises were just a bit too acid a yellow to be called a rare-but-humanly-possible amber or bronze. The irises were also somewhat more glossy and bulbous than they had been before he'd been bitten, and had the very disconcerting, involuntary ability, neither serpentine nor human, to change in size. He could not, no matter how hard he tried, do it on command, but when he was agitated or otherwise flustered, they would expand, flooding the corners of his eyes with gold and pushing the bright whites out of sight behind his eyelids. At first, he'd thought they had gone full gold permanently, and it was only after the initial, prolonged wave of panic had subsided that he'd realized he still had white sclera at all.

His tongue was, thankfully, still pink and rounded and appeared outwardly human, at least when he wasn't trying to stretch it out as far as it could go, which was quite a bit further than the vagaries of human genetic variation could possibly explain. He could live with sometimes hissing a little so long as he still retained the ability to use human language. 

He'd taught himself years ago to tie cherry stems into knots with his tongue. It was a fun party trick, and people found it oddly compelling. But now that seemed like child's play; he could construct complex, ornamental bows and all manner of twisty, loopy, convoluted knots out of his cherry stems, and then untie them all again in ten seconds flat. He could pluck the cherries from their stems too without using his teeth, by wrapping his tongue around the fruit and executing a sort of squeezing, spiraling maneuver that looked, he had to admit, rather pornographic. 

Eventually his natural curiosity got the better of him, and he learned exactly how far he could unhinge his jaw. If he was being entirely honest, this was quite a bit further than he was exactly comfortable with. He made one, and only one, very ill-fated attempt to swallow a whole egg (hard-boiled, and peeled – he was not an _animal_ ). It worked, but the feeling, to say nothing of the visual, of an entire egg very slowly and obviously making its way down his long, thin throat by grotesque peristalsis was revolting. It was not an experience he ever intended to repeat; so long as he still had perfectly functional, human molars, he would use them to _chew_ his food, snake instincts be damned.

The jaw thing did enable him to make really terrible faces, a discovery that resulted in hours spent grimacing at himself in his bathroom mirror until he landed on the perfect combination of pulled-back lips, prominently bared eyeteeth, intense reptilian stare, and angry hiss. It might also, he supposed, come in handy if he ever needed to bite someone, although that thought was about as tempting as the idea of swallowing live mice whole. 

He was not, as far as he could tell, venomous, although it wasn't exactly like he could _test that out_ on anyone. He _had_ tried to bite his own hand, which only reminded him uncomfortably of his awkward teenage attempts to practice kissing on his own hand. When that had not worked (either the biting – he did not even manage to break the skin – or the kissing – which had only resulted in a very embarrassing purple bruise between his thumb and forefinger), he'd tried on an orange. All he'd ended up with was a mouth full of bitter orange rind and a bruised ego.

His speed, reaction time, and flexibility were all enhanced as well. He managed to snatch a housefly that had invaded his flat by lunging sideways and grabbing it out of the air with one hand, and subsequently spent several mildly distressing moments wondering if he was supposed to _eat_ it. Eventually, he let it go out a window in disgust, and defiantly ate an apple instead. It was tart and crisp and decidedly more delicious than the fly could possibly have been.

Perhaps the strangest, and coolest, of Crowley's newly acquired skills was the ability to climb vertically up walls, without need for handholds or rope. Rather than pulling himself up with his hands and arms, like normal humans did when climbing things, he slithered up, down, and sideways with an odd, undulating sort of motion, flexing and contracting his spine and abdominal muscles. Somehow he could do this without falling, although it required concentration; gravity was still present, lurking in the background and ready to assert dominance at the first sign of weakness. He had never been good at physics, but he thought it might have something to do with friction and the ratio of contact area to mass; whatever the case, it worked best when his body was pressed flat against the surface, with limbs splayed out and toes pointed. It was not exactly easy or comfortable to be plastered to the wall like an undignified starfish, but there was a certain instinctive delight in doing something that literally no one else in the world was capable of. Hands were technically unnecessary, although it did help to use them as anchor or pivot points to reach ledges or sills or other specific locations. (He'd never admit it, not under pain of death, but it was wildly fun to slither up onto the ceiling, waving his arms wildly in the air and shouting _look, Ma, no hands!_ with an unreasonable amount of glee.) He could even, with some effort, manage to stay splayed out on the ceiling, motionless, for some time. His record was one hour, twenty-three minutes, at which point he had fallen in an limp, undignified heap of limbs onto the bed below and promptly fallen asleep. It was exhausting work, defying gravity. 

Somewhere along the line, he realized, he'd begun thinking of himself not as a man, but as a _man-shaped being._ This revelation did not bother him nearly as much as he might have expected. 

* * *

At first, Crowley hadn't been sure what, if anything, he could do with his newly acquired abilities. Sure, it was an interesting exercise to track people by their thermal signatures, but one couldn't really do that recreationally without being labeled a stalker. Similarly, "just hanging out on the ceiling" and "doing really weird things with tongue" were not exactly the types of skills one could put on a resumé, at least not one in his field. 

He was walking around aimlessly one night, testing out the range and specificity of his heat-seeking skills, when he detected the pattering vibrations of three distinct pairs of footsteps. First, there was a frantic series of hurried, irregular steps, as if someone were running as fast and as hard as they could, without finesse. These were followed by two sets of heavier, thudding footfalls in close pursuit. Soon thereafter, he became aware of three separate heat signatures coming down the street toward him, and then audible screams and angry grunts. The distressed pleas were coming from a young woman who was being manhandled by two large men; each had a hold of one of her arms, and together they were attempting to drag her, struggling and crying, into a nearby alley. None of them had noticed Crowley yet, in his dark clothes, pressed close against a wall on the opposite side of the street.

Crowley did not stop to think. He leapt out of the shadows with inhuman speed and grabbed the free arm of the man closer to him, yanking him away from the woman. Later, he would realize that he'd had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He was relying entirely on instinct: human protectiveness, serpentine reflex. Everything was a blur of adrenaline and movement, darting and quick. 

Somehow, he managed to land a solid punch directly to the man's face. The last time Crowley had punched someone had been as a child, when some playground bully had made fun of his ginger hair. He'd lost that long-ago fight, but the difference between twelve-year-old Crowley and his current self was twenty-odd years and a handful of superhuman abilities. As a result, the man was on the ground, bleeding profusely from the nose and moaning in pain. Crowley had come out the winner in this matchup for certain, but not without consequence: his own knuckles were split and bruised, and he thought he might have sprained his thumb. Snakes were made for precision strikes, after all, not flailing fists and brute strength.

Sometime during the scuffle his sunglasses had fallen off. 

The other man had let go of the woman's arm in the meantime and was circling around, trying to sneak up behind Crowley while he was distracted. It might have worked, had Crowley been an ordinary human. As it was, the man's thermal signature and the vibrations from his footsteps betrayed his exact location. Crowley could smell him too, a sour, unpleasant combination of stale booze and body odor. Acting purely on instinct once again, he spun around without warning and scrunched his face into his scariest scowl, baring his teeth and hissing vehemently. The man, who had been full of belligerent ire a moment ago, paled visibly and sucked in a shaky, audible breath, his clenched fists slackening and falling to his sides. He backed away, nearly tripping in his haste, half-sobbing something that sounded like a plea or a prayer. Only a few of the blubbered words were comprehensible: "—please for the love of god don't bite me oh fuck oh fuck oh _fuck_ don't _eat_ me—"

The woman, who had been behind him and hadn't seen the horrendous face that apparently made fully grown bullies quake in their boots, was staring at him. Crowley inclined his head in a small nod and hoped that she would understand he meant her no harm. She did not scream or run away, which was reassuring. She was, however, peering rather too intently at his eyes for comfort. 

Sirens shrieked in the distance, rapidly coming closer. Crowley made the abrupt decision that he would not be explaining himself to the police or subjecting himself to any more scrutiny that evening. Snatching up his fallen sunglasses, he beat a hasty retreat out the far end of the alley. He walked away down the sidewalk as quickly as he dared, trying to appear like nothing more than a normal citizen out for a casual evening walk. Adrenaline still pulsed through his veins, along with an intense, euphoric flood of elation and purpose. It was as if the thing that had been rattling around loose in his head ever since he'd been bitten had finally fallen into place.

The story was in all the papers the following morning. When the police arrived, they had found both the victim and the perpetrators babbling about a man with glowing, golden, slit-pupiled eyes who had appeared out of nowhere, hissing like a demon. One of the men swore up and down that the stranger's head had morphed into an actual snake's head, complete with forked tongue and wicked fangs and gleaming black scales, atop a human body. The woman was grateful that he had stopped her attackers, and claimed that she had not been at all afraid that the snake-man would harm her in turn. Why this was the case, she could not really say. The police discounted the reports as evidence of PTSD in the case of the victim and drug-altered perception in the case of the assailants, and closed the case without attempting to identify the unknown savior. They had, after all, managed to arrest both of the perpetrators with very little effort on their part, and were thus not unduly concerned about other parties. It would only create more paperwork for no good reason.

Respectable news outlets and far-less-respectable online discussion forums alike had field days speculating about the identity and motives of the cryptic "Serpent of New Eden." Some thought he was an angel come to save them all, others that he was a demon sent to lure them into temptation. Conspiracy theorists wondered if he was an alien, a cryptid, a secret government experiment gone wrong, or some kind of genetic anomaly. These conjectures were all ridiculously off the mark, of course, but Crowley quite liked the sound of "The Serpent" as a name.

* * *

With new abilities and new hobbies inevitably came new challenges. Crowley knew that he'd been incredibly lucky that first time. The incident had taken place in a dark alley late at night, with minimal ambient light. The woman had been understandably panicked and her would-be assailants most likely drunk or otherwise under the influence. Nobody had mentioned red hair or a snake tattoo, so presumably those things had escaped notice, but he certainly couldn't count on everyone being quite so unobservant all of the time. If this was going to become a habit, he'd need some kind of uniform, something that covered up the more distinctive features that people might recognize as belonging to one Anthony J. Crowley. 

For that matter, his tight jeans and blazer had really not been the most comfortable thing to wear while leaping out of the shadows to scare the shit out of hoodlums and lowlifes. Crowley's limbs had acquired a range of motion that vastly outstripped that of his admittedly very snug trousers. While he was used to feeling somewhat restricted by his clothing in his day-to-day life, he couldn't help envisioning several highly embarrassing scenarios involving split seams and doing the splits. Something that was easier to move in would probably be more practical for future nocturnal endeavors. 

Unfortunately, something that was easy to move in meant something designed for exercise or, Someone forbid, sports. And that meant spandex.

And so Crowley found himself reluctantly venturing into a serious sporting goods store for the very first time in his life. After enduring a stammering interaction with a bored store clerk in which he attempted to dodge a number of highly specific and unanswerable questions about his non-existent bicycle, he emerged the not-so-proud owner of an alarmingly revealing set of high-end spandex cycling gear. 

At least it was black.

Anthony J Crowley, flash bastard and style maven extraordinaire, would ordinarily never be caught dead in spandex. But, he had to admit, there was a reason why superheroes and athletes wore the stuff. Somehow, the same movements that were gawky and awkward and made him look as if he were constantly half a step away from careening into the nearest wall became sinuous and graceful and dangerously fluid when unhampered by tight trousers and restrictive slim blazers. 

But still. It was very, very hard to feel properly serious (or even just not like an utter and complete fool) in the blasted ensemble. He felt distressingly and conspicuously naked every time he went out in spandex, even when it was so dark out that nobody could see how tight, how stretchy, how infernally _shiny_ it was. He was constantly adjusting the hood, which was aggravatingly loose in contrast to the rest of the skintight outfit, and had to pray that it did not slip off during some of his more acrobatic moves and reveal his distinguishing features. There _had_ to be a better option, something that concealed everything it needed to while still allowing a full range of motion, and did not make him feel like an undignified idiot. 

Several vaguely embarrassing online queries later, he found himself awkwardly ringing the doorbell of a nice, if somewhat ubiquitous, townhouse in a quiet, high-end neighborhood. Crowley considered himself fairly open-minded and non-judgmental, but even he was mildly surprised at how understated and _respectable_ the whole thing was, for a place that discreetly advertised high-quality, custom-made latex and fetish wear, among other services.

The proprietress, who called herself Madame Tracy, was used to dealing with blushing first-time customers who spoke in embarrassed, mumbling half-sentences (or, in Crowley's case, hissed and spoke in words absent all vowels). She was surprisingly motherly, her heat signature a warm, vibrant orange. Being in the profession that she was in, she was also a being of utmost discretion and managed to convey as much without having to say a single word. Somehow, within ten minutes of walking hesitantly into her airy, bright atelier, Crowley found himself sitting at a small, lace-covered table having tea and biscuits and pouring out his strange story. 

It was a relief to finally tell someone. He'd been perfectly willing and ready to lie and make up a story about why he needed a very specific sort of suit, but, as it turned out, Tracy was the best listener he could possibly have wished for. She had, after all, seen things far more shocking than a man with snake's eyes and received far stranger costuming requests, and she did not judge. 

"Now. Let's talk about this suit you want. But first." She indicated his long, loosely knotted metal-mesh tie, which he thought made him look rather effortlessly cool. "What on Earth is that around your neck?"

"This? A tie. Do you like it? It's—"

"Honey, it's a _choking hazard_ , is what it is."

Crowley, true to form, inadvertently made an incoherent choking noise. 

"Trust me. I know a thing or two about things that can be used to choke people. And while that's not always a bad thing, I doubt you'll be consenting to it while you're fighting some bad guy in an alley."

"Fine. No ties. Gotcha."

Opinions on neckwear aside, Tracy's aesthetic vision turned out to be surprisingly similar to his own. The painstakingly custom-fitted suit she made him was supple, comfortable, and very stylish, a masterful fusion of form and function. She'd based the design on the Australian red-bellied black snake, a sleek, elegant, deadly creature in its own right. It was black, of course, with a subtle pattern of embossed scales and red accents. The hood clung tightly to his skull and came down low on his forehead and around the sides of his face, hiding his distinctive red hair and serpent tattoo. (There was a delicious sort of irony there that he flaunted that tattoo daily as Anthony J. Crowley and was now hiding it from view as the Serpent.) A decorative accent around the head flared out like a cobra's hood, revealing a flash of deep crimson. Red for danger, red for venom. In slantwise light, it cast deep shadows across his face, in a way that somehow served to enhance the luminous, liquid gold of his eyes. 

The material, which was incidentally the same fabric that many of Tracy's regular clients swore by, was stain-resistant, breathable, and highly resistant to tears and other forms of rough treatment. It had been specially engineered not to dull tactile sensation despite its strength. Somehow, even though it fit as tight as a second skin, it did not make him feel like a shrink-wrapped sausage the way the spandex did. It clung in all the right places, was as bendy as he was, concealed all the things it needed to conceal, was gratifyingly non-shiny, and was grippy and sleek in exactly the right combination. 

The insignia of a serpent, coiled within a shield-shaped outline, was embossed, black on black, on a chest plate that Tracy assured him was bulletproof. Crowley sincerely hoped that he would never be in a position to put that assertion to the test, but it was nice to know it was there, along with a similar, unadorned panel on the back. 

The suit came with a number of little details and gadgets that were very thoughtful and extremely cool. A double-banded bracelet made of matte black metal flipped open into a pair of handcuffs embossed with the snake symbol. (Tracy knew where to acquire the best handcuffs, for many purposes.) Reinforcements of a strong but flexible polymer were layered over the knuckles of the gloves, so that there would be no repeat of the knuckle-splitting incident when he inevitably had to punch someone else. There was also a cup built of the same material just in case he got kicked in the delicate bits (sadly, this was probably also inevitable given the line of work he was getting into). A secret compartment inside the shaft of one of the boots concealed a collection of small tools – a thin blade, a couple of screwdrivers, a file, a pair of scissors, the key to the handcuffs – that folded up into a remarkably flat, unobtrusive package to rival any Swiss Army knife. A thin, flexible length of rope fed smoothly through a channel around his waist. 

"Always useful, in case you ever want to tie someone up, dearie," said Madame Tracy with a wink, presenting him with an entire spool of the fine, silky, surprisingly strong stuff. 

Tracy's work did not come cheap, especially for a struggling freelance reporter. Still, it was the best of the best, and not having to roam the streets clad in spandex sausage casing was worth almost any expense. 

"How much do I owe you?" he asked, mentally steeling himself for the number. "And I'd appreciate it if we could work out some kind of installment plan—" 

"Nonsense, love. It's on the house."

"It's what?"

"You save even one more person like that young lady you told me about the other day, that's worth ten suits to me. This town could use someone like you, to look after all the good people falling through the cracks. Tell ya what. You stop by every once in a while for tea, and tell me what you've been up to, maybe get up there on that bloody fifteen-foot-high ceiling of mine and change the lightbulbs when they go out, and we'll call it even." 

And that was that. He made an attempt to argue with her, but Tracy, for all her tea and biscuits and sweetness, had a lifetime of professional experience in getting her own way. He was smart enough to realize that this was an argument he would never win, and gave in with some measure of grace. 

And if Tracy noticed, later, photographs of someone in a familiar sleek, dark bodysuit popping up on various news outlets (first in the less reputable, conspiracy-minded, Internet-only sorts of publications, but eventually on the venerable pages of the _Times_ and the _Observer_ themselves), she kept her lips sealed. She knew she'd get the real story straight from the source in a few days anyway. Supreme discretion was just part and parcel of her job, and she was, everyone agreed, the very best at what she did.

* * *

With a new sense of purpose and the spandex issue finally put to (permanent) rest, Crowley threw himself into training, testing the limits of his abilities. Luckily for him, his altered body seemed to be highly resistant to severe breakage. The serpentine flexibility of his bones that enabled him to slither through narrow spaces and bend in uncanny ways also allowed him to fall, if not exactly gracefully, in a relatively injury-free manner, landing in a sort of fluid coil of limbs rather than a mess of shattered bones and snapped ligaments. (He'd field tested this, accidentally, by falling off the side of a two-story building. He'd lost his grip on walls that were higher, but, luckily, there was usually something, a drainpipe or a window ledge, on the way down to catch himself on. He had no idea how far he could _actually_ fall without irreversibly damaging himself when he hit the ground, and was not keen to find out. Bodies in free-fall reached terminal velocity at some point, he remembered from long-ago physics classes, and terminal velocity sounded, well, _terminal_ , even for him.) Bruises and cuts, unfortunately, still occurred with alarming frequency and hurt just as much as they always had, but at least they healed preternaturally quickly and never left scars.

He began telling people that he had taken up rock climbing by way of explanation for the strange abrasions and bruises. It was close enough to the truth, although he climbed walls with an ease that human practitioners of the sport would undoubtedly find awe-inspiring and a technique that they would probably consider horrifying. (They also most likely did not regularly try to contort themselves into strange noodle-like shapes in order to squeeze through narrowly cracked windows and other small openings.) Like them, he practiced extensively, on walls of increasing difficulty. He worked his way up from simple, one- or two-story abandoned brick buildings to daunting, futuristic glass-and-metal skyscrapers, late at night after all the office workers were home asleep in their beds. Rough surfaces were easier than smooth ones. Glass was difficult, if not impossible, but even the sleekest of glass-walled buildings had metal crossbeams and tiny ledges and small imperfections that became visible when one slithered up close enough. (Still, it was a lot easier to climb up one or two floors, squeeze through an open window, and then take the bloody lift the rest of the way up. You had to be practical at times, and Crowley was suffering-averse enough to forego the dramatic optics, impressive as they were, of scaling the outside of a seventy-story building in favor of not potentially taking a swan dive of several hundred feet.)

Climbing up walls and lurking on the ceiling worked through the suit, which had been designed to maximize tactile sensation. (In his regular clothing, he could not feel the microscopic variations in the surface with anything approaching the same finesse. And besides, brick and stucco were murder on fine fabrics.) It was one thing to shimmy naked up the relatively pristine walls and ceiling of his flat and another thing altogether to do so up the exterior surfaces of grungy New Eden architecture. It would, for one thing, be literally ball-shriveling cold in the wintertime. For another thing, there were splinters, jagged bits of metal, bird shit, needles for preventing birds from shitting, and countless other bits of urban refuse that he would much prefer did not come into direct contact with his bare skin. Was he still capable of contracting tetanus? He did not know, and had no wish to find out. (He had of course asked the Internet if snakes could get tetanus, but it had unhelpfully only told him that snakebites could _give_ people tetanus, yet another serpentine attribute he had no desire to explore.)

Crowley had wild dreams of being James Bond at first, but, newly acquired superpowers or no, it turned out that he was not at all cut out for things like leaping off rooftops onto moving vehicles or jumping out of planes or brutal slugfests. (He was, it must be said, quite good at Bond's brand of reckless driving. He was also skilled at wiling his way through cocktail parties, but that was a skill that came in handy more for his day job as an investigative reporter than for his secret life as a superhero.) 

The Serpent's talents lay more in unfortunately less dramatic things like slinking through narrow openings and being able to sniff (or, perhaps more accurately, taste) out concealed explosives. He was fast and slithery and sneaky and apparently very unnerving. It was shocking how many people stopped functioning properly when he hissed at them. He was adept at melting into the shadows without a trace and thus was almost never still on the scene when the police arrived to find stunned and sometimes terrified criminals trussed up or knocked unconscious.

He had yet to identify a heroic situation in which doing really weird things with his tongue would come in handy. Hope sprang eternal, however.

There were no high-speed chases in exotic locales, and no wild shootouts. He had no idea how to shoot a gun, and no desire to learn, although he soon found himself divesting people of them far too regularly for comfort. Most of the villains he thwarted were just small-time, nobody lowlifes rather than evil masterminds, but that distinction did not actually make defeating them any less satisfying. If anything, he liked that he was helping people close to home. 

As far as disguises went, the sunglasses were surprisingly effective. Sure, they made him noticeable, but in a _flash bastard, who does he think he is_ way and not a _not actually human_ way. The vast majority of people were too polite to ask why he never took them off, even at night. He claimed, on the few occasions that somebody actually had the gumption to question it, that he had a medical condition which rendered his eyes terribly sensitive to light. On occasion, he caught people giving him strange looks, and once, at the cinema, a couple loudly whispering about why a blind man would want to go see a film. These things, though, were nothing a good dose of attitude and a dirty look or two of his own couldn’t quell. (And yes, he discovered to his great satisfaction, it was entirely possible to throw the dirtiest of dirty looks without ever revealing one’s eyes). 

As talk of the Serpent spread in the city, people began teasing Crowley about his tattoo with increasing frequency, calling him a Serpent fanboy. Generally, he responded to these accusations by telling the truth, that it was a coincidence, that he'd had that particular adornment since well before anyone had ever heard of the Serpent. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly snippy, he would respond by saying that he was " _his very first fanboy, you might say._ " People laughed, or rolled their eyes, and not a single one considered the truth right in front of their eyes.

Crowley had been interviewing people for stories since his school days. He knew, without doubt, that people noticed things, remembered things, that were odd and uncanny. A pair of eyes in a color and pupil configuration not normally seen in humans, with irises that changed sizes involuntarily, very much fell under the umbrella of odd and uncanny. People were afraid of the strange, and mesmerized by it. People would remember, and people would talk. 

And while Anthony J. Crowley had always been memorable, for his flame-red hair and his snake tattoo and his tight trousers and his style and his attitude, he did not want to be memorable for _this._ He knew that the world would ask: _Who is this man? Who is this freak? Is he a vigilante or a hero? An angel or a demon?_ He had no desire to be a carnival sideshow, to be a miracle or an abomination. He was not a butterfly, beautiful and bright and short-lived, to be caught in a net and dissected and admired and crucified.

He was a snake, hiding in dark places, waiting to strike unawares. 

Sometimes you just wanted to slip under the radar, to write the story and not to _be_ the story, to pretend to be a normal human being living a normal life in a normal world. 

There was a place for a man, or a man-shaped being at least, with snake eyes and snake instincts and snake abilities, in this world. So, too, there was a place for a not-so-mild-mannered reporter who asked too many questions, with fiery hair and an attitude to match. But nobody had to know they were one and the same, The Serpent and Anthony J. Crowley.


	4. Agnes and Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who have been reading along and waiting patiently for Aziraphale to make his appearance, this one's for you. :)

Along with the rise of The Serpent came, unexpectedly, a rise in Anthony J. Crowley's professional and financial fortunes. Perhaps it was because of the Serpent's newfound sense of purpose bleeding into the other aspects of Crowley's life, or perhaps it was just sheer coincidence (not unlike a one-in-a-million snakebite), but everything seemed to be happening all at once. 

He'd gotten a steady job, for one thing. And not even at some dinky weekly with a shoestring budget, but at the venerable _New Eden Times_ itself. Beelzebub Prince, to no one's surprise, had been named editor in chief following their keen and in-depth reporting on the warehouse explosion, and, perhaps more surprisingly, Crowley had been one of their first hires upon their promotion. 

He'd barely settled into his new routine (both the daytime and the nighttime ones) before another development occurred which was to shake the foundations of his life. This one was, on the surface, far less shocking or traumatic than getting bitten by a possibly mutagenic reptile, but, when you got right down to it, just as disruptive.

What happened was that Crowley met Aziraphale. 

He'd only been at the _Times_ for a little longer than a month, when management announced that an imminent merger between the paper and its long-time rival, the _Observer_ , was all but a done deal. Beelzebub Prince and the other loyal, long-time employees of the _Times_ had always mocked the _Observer_ as a _lifestyle_ paper, all phony horoscopes and hoity-toity book reviews and bombastic opinions. This was admittedly rather unfair, as the _Observer_ reported the news with just as much thoroughness and veracity as the _Times_ , but it was nevertheless true that its strengths, the things that it won awards for, were its opinion pieces and reviews. It had been the first paper in town, way back when the city of New Eden had still been shiny and new and full of optimism. Thus, the _Observer_ considered itself to be the original and the best, and tended, also mostly unfairly, to view the _Times_ as an upstart child lacking a certain sophistication. It _was_ true, in Crowley's opinion, that his employer had a laser focus on hard news, sometimes to the detriment of all of the other sections of the paper, but, just the same, he chafed at the _Observer'_ s condescension and snobbery.

The exact nature of the agreement between the management of the two papers remained unclear to everyone except those directly involved. Despite the asking of questions being literally what everyone at both publications did for a living, they all somehow knew that it would be certain death (or, at the very least, demotion) to ask for clarification. Whatever had happened behind the closed doors of their respective corner offices, it had resulted in the creation of a new, singular paper named the _New Eden Times-Observer_. Gabriel Hornblower and Beelzebub Prince were to be co-editors in chief. The official line was that the strengths of one would complement those of the other, creating a powerhouse duo that no one else would be able to touch. Privately, it was rumored that neither would give an inch, especially not to the other, and so sharing power equally was the only viable, non-nuclear option. Gabriel was an insensitive prick, Beelzebub a loose cannon, and they very publicly could not stand one another, but the one thing they could agree on was that their paper had to be the best.

Crowley and his colleagues moved posthaste into the _Observer_ 's downtown offices, which were objectively far superior to those of the Times. (Being the first paper in town came with some fringe benefits, apparently, like first pick of the best real estate; all of the good buildings had already been claimed by the time the _Times_ came into being.) The newsroom was spacious, airy, and bright; he could keep plants at his desk here, and they'd actually get enough light to thrive. It was located on the top floor of a venerable old Art Deco skyscraper, and had the kind of panoramic view he normally only saw at night while clinging precariously to the outsides of tall buildings. 

Through some quirk of fate, Gabriel Hornblower himself had somehow ended up showing Crowley around that first afternoon and introducing him to his new colleagues, most of whom Crowley found instantly forgettable. They faded into the elegant woodwork and tastefully decorated walls, their heat signatures pale orange lights hovering placidly at their desks and computers. Gabriel kept introducing him as _Anthony Crowley, junior reporter from the Times_ , somehow managing to emphasize _junior_ and _Times_ in a subtly condescending way each and every time. He probably called snakes _vermin_ too, thought Crowley sourly. 

He had become quite adept at tuning out Gabriel's falsely cheery pontifications by the time they neared the end of their round of the office and came face to face with a man who was standing with his back to one of the tall, arched, wrought-iron-framed windows. He was dressed in a slightly outdated, long, cream-colored coat and a tartan bow tie. The late afternoon sunlight slanted, low and golden, through the window, melding into the warm glow of his heat signature and casting a gleaming halo of light over his striking white-gold curls.

Crowley noticed hands as a matter of course these days, thanks to his new hobby; people's fingers tended to twitch or flex unconsciously if they had something to hide or were thinking about punching you. This man's hands, wrapped gently around a thick leatherbound diary, were large and steady and looked well-cared-for, even manicured. Crowley thought that they must be soft, with a strong grip, and he was struck with the unaccountable urge to know what they would feel like clasped between his own hands, which were all bones and callouses and scrapes, the nails jagged and broken from his nighttime habit of clambering up the rough exterior walls of buildings.

"And this is Aziraphale, our restaurant reviewer," Gabriel was saying, clapping a broad hand against the man's shoulder, "as you can see, from his … physique." 

Aziraphale winced, minutely, although it was unclear whether it due to the thinly veiled insult or the heft of the shoulder slap. Gabriel blithely continued blabbering.

"I keep telling Aziraphale here that he needs to be less _soft._ You gotta stay on your toes in this business. Can't have you losing another big scoop, can we now?"

Gabriel punctuated this statement with a loud, jocular laugh, and added, to Crowley, "Can you imagine? He lost an exclusive to a _food blogger_ of all people last month!"

Aziraphale's heat signature flared, sudden and bright, as an embarrassed flush suffused his face and he looked down at the ground. Crowley felt a sudden, sharp desire to leap forward and strike Gabriel in the face. He wasn't wearing his reinforced gloves, of course, but the bruised knuckles would be worth it just to see Gabriel's look of shock right before the Serpent's lightning-fast fist knocked that smug smile clean off his big, dumb face. 

Unfortunately, introductions completed, Gabriel had already moved on, leaving Crowley and Aziraphale standing alone by the window. Breaking Gabriel's nose would have to remain only a daydream, although it was probably for the best that Crowley not blow his cover on the very first day and punch his new boss in the face all at the same time.

"Well that went down like a lead balloon," he said, relaxing the hand that had reflexively tightened into a fist and extending it for a handshake instead.

He'd been right: Aziraphale's hands were indeed soft, and also warm, with a pleasantly firm grip.

"What?"

"Ah… never mind. Aziraphale, was it? Interesting name."

"It's the name of an angel. It's a mouthful, I know. It's why I go by A.Z. Fell on my byline," said Aziraphale, with the resigned air of someone who has had to answer some variation of the same question with practically every introduction of their entire life.

"An angel. I like it. Suits you." 

"That's very nice of you to say, Anthony."

"I prefer Crowley, actually, if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind."

"And I'm not _nice_. I'm just telling the truth. What was Gabriel talking about by the way, you losing your exclusive? Aren't you a _food critic_? I hadn't realized the world of restaurant reviews was so cutthroat."

"Ah… well, you see… I was supposed to have an exclusive interview with a famously reclusive chef. The first and only interview he's given in, oh, at least ten years. But I … I gave it away."

"You _what_?"

"I gave it away! Although Gabriel thinks I just got scooped. But the young lady, Eve, the blogger, she was so sweet and trying so hard. Her blog is called _First Bites_ , I believe. It's quite lovely. She has a very fresh perspective on the food scene. It's hard, you know, to make it on your own, without all the advantages of a paper or magazine supporting you. And so, I thought it couldn't hurt to let her have the interview."

It _was_ hard to make it on your own. Crowley knew that, he'd _been_ that struggling freelance reporter chasing the ever-elusive scoop not so very long ago. And sure, more experienced reporters had offered him tips, and professional advice, and occasional breadcrumbs, but never anything even remotely approaching the level of pure selflessness of Aziraphale's action.

He spent his nights chasing criminals and wrongdoers, some of whom were just plain awful and others who were merely selfish or ignorant or misguided, trying to bring a little bit of justice back into the world, and yet somehow he'd forgotten that there were other ways to tip the scales. There were still people in the world who were so good and generous and kind that they might as well be angels. Or, well, one person, at least. He was aware that his mouth was hanging open cartoonishly; his eyes, behind the sunglasses, were a shocked wash of pure gold. 

Aziraphale's cologne was a subtle and old-fashioned combination of citrus and spice. He wanted to flick out his tongue and wrap it around the smell and the taste of it, to catch that little tantalizing hint of powdery lavender soap and something that was similar to, but not exactly, printer's ink that he could just detect underneath. He swallowed the urge, forcing himself to focus on his human senses, sight and sound and speech. 

Aziraphale was looking at him with a little worried furrow between his eyebrows, wringing his hands, and saying sheepishly, "Oh, I do hope I didn't do the wrong thing. If Gabriel ever finds out…"

"Your secret's safe with me. And what that condescending prick Gabriel doesn't know won't hurt him. I bet he wouldn't know a good restaurant if it bit him in the ass."

"Crowley!" Aziraphale looked mildly shocked at Crowley's offhand assessment of his new boss, and shot a nervous glance toward Gabriel's office. There was, however, a little quirk at the corner of his mouth.

"Eh," said Crowley nonchalantly, "I'm one of _them._ One of Beelzebub's unwashed masses, come to storm your ivory citadel. What else would he expect?"

"You're right, though," mumbled Aziraphale, under his breath. "He told me once that it was all _gross matter_ to him."

"Ugh. I know the type. Lemme guess. He started lecturing you about how food is fuel and going off about macros, whatever the fuck those are."

"And he was so _proud_ of the macros too."

The quirk at the corner of Aziraphale's mouth twitched and bloomed into a full-blown smile. It was brilliant and infectious and _beautiful,_ and Crowley was helpless to do anything except grin back, equally broad and true. A moment passed, in which they both silently basked in shared mirth, and then Aziraphale seemed to remember himself and his surroundings. Crowley watched with some sadness as the golden smile shrank back behind a wall of polite reserve. 

"Well," Aziraphale said, "It was a pleasure to meet you, Crowley."

"Nice meeting you too. I'm sure I'll see you around, uh, here. The office." 

He wanted to ask Aziraphale out to dinner, wanted to make him smile again, wanted to listen to him talk for another four hours, or four days, or four lifetimes. He wanted to know all of his secrets. He had no idea how to ask. The weight of his own secrets suddenly seemed very heavy.

"I don't think it would be wise for the two of us to fraternize too much."

They were supposed to be, if not enemies exactly, adversaries. Old enmities and rivalries between their two competing papers, now joined together in one big, not-exactly-happy family, died hard. The reporters of the former _Times_ tended to think of themselves as hard-boiled serious investigative journalists, all grit and no glamour, pounding the pavement in search of the perfect interview. Some of his colleagues, most notably Hastur and Ligur, took that aesthetic way too far, with their insistence on wearing battered trenchcoats that had seen better days (but certainly never a dry cleaner) and their penchant for stakeouts. (They were, he had to admit, very good at the latter, which was basically just occupationally-sanctioned lurking.)

On the flip side, those reporters who had come over from the Observer generally considered the new colleagues that had been foisted upon them by the merger to be uncultured and boorish, and made it a point to snub them whenever possible.

"Oh," he said, hollowly. He felt suddenly bereft, which was _ridiculous_ , because he'd only met Aziraphale five minutes ago, and there was no reason for them to be friends already, or ever. There was no reason for the rejection to sting the way it did. "Right. Well. I should get back to work anyway. Deadline. The news doesn't write itself. You know."

He forced himself to turn away, to focus on his own desk on the far side of the room. Just as he was taking the first steps back toward it, he heard Aziraphale say from behind him, in a quiet voice, "I don't agree with them, you know, for the record. I don't think you're inferior, just because you came from the _Times._ "

He whipped his head around, probably a little too fast to be acceptably human, but Aziraphale was already flipping studiously through the book in his hands, carefully not acknowledging Crowley at all. 

* * *

Not only was he one of the _Observer_ crew, Aziraphale wrote for the _lifestyle_ section. He wore bow ties and drank loose-leaf tea in fancy china cups with saucers and called everyone “dear”. In short, he was everything a so-called "real" reporter like Crowley, with his edgy wardrobe and his dented super-size travel mug full of triple-strength coffee and his curse-laden vocabulary, should have despised.

But then again, people made wrong assumptions all the time about Crowley based on his appearance and outward behavior. Due to the tattoo and the sunglasses and the tight trousers and the attitude, everyone thought that Crowley was the type of person who spent his nights out in dark clubs, wearing alarmingly revealing clothing, undulating up against sweaty bodies, and doing illicit things in dark hallways with a revolving door of consenting adults. In reality, he spent his nights on cold rooftops, alone, wearing a skintight latex suit that covered him from head to toe, undulating up drainpipes, and sneaking up behind unsavory people in dark alleyways to stop them from doing illicit things to unsuspecting, unconsenting victims.

Romantic entanglements were off the table for him, not so much because he lacked interest but because they were far too great a risk. It would be almost impossible in any kind of intimate relationship to hide some of his less human traits, the snake eyes or the extreme bendiness or the weirdly agile tongue or the fact that he sometimes woke up on the ceiling.

Tracy had assured him that he could pass those traits off as body modifications (well, maybe not the ceiling thing, but nearly everything else), and moreover that she knew plenty of people who'd find them more than just a little attractive, and who wouldn't bat an eyelash at their oddity. She had offered to make introductions any time he liked. He'd never taken her up on the offer, had never felt even remotely tempted by the option.

He ran around the city all day, chasing scoops and interviews, and all night, chasing criminals. Every night, he went to bed alone. It was a tradeoff he'd thought he didn't mind making: getting to keep his secrets and both of his separate lives for the price of the possibility, not even the certainty, of love. Sure, he felt lonely sometimes, but it was an abstract sort of loneliness, without a face or even an idea of one. He was fine with it, with his solitary existence and his secrets and the occasional wank.

Or he was fine with it until he met Aziraphale. Aziraphale, who was named for an angel and was soft and generous and kind and had the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen.

It was a moot point in any case. They were just co-workers, barely polite acquaintances at best. Aziraphale did not even wish to _fraternize_ with him. He was polite but distant and reserved whenever their paths crossed at work. What did they have in common besides their employer, anyway? Aziraphale probably spent his evenings going to the opera and having civilized conversations about literature and philosophy, and probably wanted nothing at all to do with someone who spent his own evenings skulking about the cold, dark underbelly of the city. He would never want someone like Crowley, with his secrets and his necessary solitude. 

* * *

Several weeks later, the Serpent was patrolling the rooftops when he noticed a commotion near an empty playground, a rather run-down one with slightly rusted metal play structures and squeaky swing sets and dirty sandboxes that paranoid mothers feared were full of needles. The neighborhood was somewhat notorious for being a place where drug deals and occasionally worse things took place with some regularity. The police seemed disinclined to increase patrols around the neighborhood, and so Crowley had taken it upon himself of late to keep an eye out most nights. He had already thwarted more than one crime-in-progress, well before the authorities deigned to show up. It was a good distraction, anyway, from sitting at home alone and overanalyzing every one of his trivial, meaningless workday interactions with Aziraphale.

Tonight's disturbance took the form of a woman, who was tall and sturdy, with a voluminous cloud of dark hair. She appeared to be middle-aged or thereabouts, and her clothing was practical but unremarkable. Appearances, of course, could be deceiving, but she did not seem at all like the sort of person who would be running through a park in a dodgy neighborhood at midnight being pursued by a mob of at least half a dozen angry, shouting men.

They were yelling insults as they chased her, among them something that sounded like _fucking witch_ (but was more likely _fucking bitch)_ and _freak_ and _monster_. These epithets in themselves would have been more than enough to make Crowley empathize with her, even discounting all the other evidence. If things had gone even a little bit differently at the beginning, it could very easily have been him down there, being crucified as a freak and a monster. 

The mob had her trapped up against the flat side of a tall, half-dome-shaped jungle gym, which loomed like a pyre behind her. She was not a small woman, and appeared remarkably composed for someone in her position, but there was only one of her and six of them. Moreover, she was unarmed and the man at the front of the pack, who seemed to be the leader, was brandishing a switchblade. (Or at least Crowley thought it was a switchblade; most of what he knew about knives came, admittedly, from movies. In any case, it looked pointy and lethal, which was probably the important bit.) Several of the others were clutching cigarette lighters in their fists, the flames flicking menacingly on and off. They formed a loose semicircle around her.

Crowley, who had slithered his way unnoticed up a nearby tree, chose this moment to leap from the canopy and even the odds. He landed at the apex of the jungle gym in a crouch, perfectly balanced on the narrow bars, a silent, deadly creature, his suit sleek and dark against the night. He stood up at the top edge of the climbing structure, stretching his spine out to its full length, and thrust his chest and neck forward like a striking cobra, contorting his face and hissing, all gums and teeth and eyes fully gone to yellow. He hoped the men would not soon forget the monster, the _freak_ , that was attacking them now. He wanted them to have nightmares for the rest of their lives.

The thing about bullies was, when you got right down to it, that they were almost always enormous cowards. The mob scattered, leaving behind only the ringleader, a big, boorish-looking man, who had initially taken a few large steps backwards but was now standing his ground. Crowley launched himself into a dramatic flip from eight feet up, leaping from the crossbar and propelling himself up and over the heads of both the woman and the man. He made a full twisting revolution midair and landed in a crouch, one hand to the ground, directly behind the man, who spun around wildly, dropping his knife into the sand. The man's lip trembled as he realized his companions had all deserted him, and had in fact already fled halfway across the park. There was little chance they were coming back for him anytime soon. 

The woman circled around so that she was side-by-side with Crowley, and darted in to pick up the fallen knife, pointing it at her erstwhile assailant. Her hands, unlike his, were steady, and there was a steely, determined look in her eye. Despite her ordinary appearance, there was a fierceness in her gaze and bearing that was compelling and possibly a little intimidating. They advanced together, the Serpent and the human; the man began to back up slowly until he was crowded up against the bars in a satisfying reversal of the situation of five minutes ago. 

"Are you all right?" Crowley inquired of the woman. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"

"I'm fine, boy. People are just afraid of what they don't understand. I think you know that truth better than most."

Sirens sounded in the distance. Right before the police cars turned the corner and came into view, she turned to him and said simply, "Go." 

Crowley's snake senses told him exactly how far away the approaching police were, but he had no idea how _her_ timing was so nearly perfect. She was still holding her assailant at knifepoint; she obviously knew how to use the knife and he was clearly little threat to her. He had the odd thought that she'd never really been in any danger at all, that she could have held off the whole mob perfectly well without his aid.

Crowley stuck his tongue out at the man, making sure to stretch it out to its most freakish, serpentine length and waggle it back and forth, and then shimmied back up the jungle gym. From there, he leapt onto an overhanging branch and melted into the darkness of the treetops; he had just made it to the leafy canopy when the first of the policemen appeared at the edge of the playground. 

He looked down. The police were busy subduing and cuffing the cowed bully, who was ranting wildly about witches and snakes. Only one person, the woman, was looking upward; her gaze was straight and true, meeting the golden pinpoints of Crowley's eyes, smaller than fireflies or stars, thirty feet up amidst a sea of rustling leaves and quiet night. It was as if she could see straight through the darkness and the distance and the suit, right down to the core of his being. She winked, and he was struck by some kind of quiet, intuitive awareness of like meeting like. 

He wondered, suddenly, whether she'd been bitten by something, too.

* * *

"Hey, Crowley!" shouted the receptionist. "There's some nutter on the phone, wants to speak to you."

"Give me their _name_ , Eric," growled Crowley, rubbing the hinges of his jawbone, where his vibration sense was focused, the way a normal person might rub their temples to try to release the tension there. He was exhausted and grumpy, having spent most of the previous night awake, even after returning home, unable to forget the previous night's strange encounter. 

"I just _did._ Nutter. She's very insistent, says she'll only speak to you and refused to leave a message."

"Fine. _Fine._ I'll talk to her if it'll make you shut up."

Eric sent the call over to his line. The voice was deep, throaty, and familiar, though he'd only heard it briefly once before. It was calm and unhurried, in contrast to Eric's shrill, unbearably chipper tones. 

"Mr. Crowley?"

"Speaking."

"My name is Agnes Nutter. I believe we've met, briefly. I am most grateful for your assistance last night."

"N—not a problem," stuttered Crowley. He was, somehow, not surprised at all, that she knew who he was, both of his identities. Oddly, he felt no panic at this realization.

"Keep an eye on the classified ads," said the voice on the other end of the line. "You're looking for something nice and accurate. You'll know what you're looking for when you see them."

"Classified ads? Who uses the classi—"

"This first one is simple, boy. They will become more difficult."

"What?"

"Thou mayest wish to seek aid from the divine. Good fortune to you." 

That was a conversation ender if he'd ever heard one. _Aid from the divine_? Was she some sort of religious fanatic? She'd seemed too down-to-earth for that kind of nonsense. On the other hand, it was not at all down-to-earth how her language and syntax had suddenly gone from relatively normal to strange and archaic. Who in the world said _thou_ anymore? Even Aziraphale, who had the most old-fashioned, persnickety vocabulary of anyone he knew, used _you_. 

"Wait! What do you mean by divine aid? How do you know so much about me? Were you there? At the warehouse explosion? Were you bitten too?"

There was no answer to his flood of questions. She had hung up. He let his head drop into his hands.

"Everything all right over there, mate?" asked Eric from the reception desk. "What did that lady want?"

"Uh, nothing. You were right. She was a total nutter."

Total nutter or not, there was no question that he was going to follow Agnes' advice, if only to satisfy his own curiosity. He scoured the galleys for the following day's classified section, and, exactly as she had predicted, knew the moment he laid eyes upon them which ads he was looking for. There were four of them, and not a single one made grammatical or comprehensive sense. They looked like pure gibberish at first – random, oddly-misspelled words arranged in syntactically incomprehensible sentences. Only with a lot of sidewise squinting did they resolve into what appeared to be surrealist literature translated by a drunk robot into a mixture of Old English and acid trip. (Crowley would not have called them either _nice_ or _accurate_ , although he had to admit that the former descriptor was entirely subjective and the latter frustratingly vague.)

The thing about classified ads in print publications was that, so long as they were fully paid up, the paper would run pretty much anything short of the blatantly illegal; ads were generally considered a pure profit stream and almost nobody actually read them. Crowley, for one, could not remember having deliberately looked at them even once in his life. All of the useful ads, the job listings and the flats for rent and so forth, were found online these days. That meant that the print classifieds were considered the province of crazy technophobic loons, and everyone else ignored them. It was a pretty good bet, then, that nobody besides Crowley had seen these strange communications, or ever would. (Technically, there was an intern whose job it was to collect the ads and format them for publication, but as any underpaid data entry intern could tell you, it is entirely possible to do that kind of job without bothering with reading comprehension.)

A normal person would have looked at those ads and discounted their originator as a crazy person lacking more than a few marbles. And Crowley very well might have too, except that he remembered Agnes Nutter's eyes that night, finding him unerringly in the darkness from thirty feet below. He remembered that feeling, too, as if they were two of a kind. 

It was too easy, and too superficial, to dismiss things one didn't understand as freakishness or insanity.

Agnes Nutter appeared to have no internet presence at all, which did not surprise him in the least, and he was unable to dig up any further information. He wondered if the name was fake, although he doubted it. It seemed to suit her so well, and besides, who in their right mind would name themselves _Nutter_ given the choice?

The call to Crowley (and an earlier one to place the ads) had come from an unlisted number, and the contact information for the ads listed only an anonymous post office box. Ordinarily, the purchase would have been accompanied by some form of traceable payment: a credit card or a check or at the very least a return address to send a bill to. Agnes, however, had simply told the intern over the phone to go look in the mail room, she wouldn't mind waiting, and there it was, a crisp white envelope, addressed in a loopy, old-fashioned cursive, containing the exact cost, down to the penny, in cash. There was, naturally, no return address. The oddest thing of all was that the envelope had been postmarked two days earlier, which meant that it had been posted well before her rescue by the Serpent. 

He couldn't make heads or tails of the ads themselves either. Neglecting his looming article deadlines, he stared at them for what seemed like hours. He recited the random, nonsensical series of words forward and backward while patrolling the streets and shimmying up the sides of the buildings. He found it hard to fall sleep because he could not stop thinking about them, and when he finally drifted off, he dreamt of a never-ending march of newsprint letters behind his eyelids. 

Eventually, it occurred to him that perhaps the words needed to be rearranged into a more logical progression. Cutting up and rearranging bits of text from the newspaper at work, even if one worked at said newspaper, _especially_ if one worked at said newspaper, made one look like a crazy person. Besides, he was surrounded by people who were literally paid to be nosy and ask questions. He could already imagine Hastur asking him why he was constructing a ransom note. No, he could not possibly continue this line of investigation at the office.

His flat was tiny, and the rarely-used table there approximately the size of a postage stamp. His bed and his couch, in contrast, were large and comfortable and perfectly suited for most activities, but even he had to admit that they were not ideal for hacking up and rearranging small, fluttery pieces of newsprint. 

And so Crowley found himself at the public library that Saturday afternoon, where there were expansive flat surfaces and no nosy colleagues, trying to force a bunch of seemingly unrelated words to make some modicum of sense. He was having no luck at all; whatever message Agnes wished to convey to him remained frustratingly incomprehensible. Whoever heard of snakes having any facility for _logic_ , after all? He'd lost track of how long he'd been sitting there, his eyes were crossing behind his sunglasses, and the words were beginning to float around of their own accord, when he heard someone say his name.

"Crowley! Fancy seeing you here!"

The voice – a little clipped, very posh, and obviously pleased – was familiar, as was the heat signature behind it. It was usually a hundred feet away on the other side of the newsroom, with a minefield of colleagues and expectations in the way; it was wholly unexpected to encounter it here, in unfamiliar surroundings and close enough to touch. Crowley looked up blearily to see an enormous, teetering pile of books, cradled easily despite their apparent weight in a pair of bare forearms, which were comfortably padded with tantalizing hints of underlying muscle. They were dusted with fine, pale hairs and softly dimpled at the curve of the elbow where they met rolled-up shirtsleeves. The hands were strong too, with neatly manicured nails and a heavy gold signet ring on the right pinky.

Aziraphale, for of course it was Aziraphale, was smiling, and it was that true smile that reached his eyes, that Crowley yearned for glimpses of at the office. He was wearing a bowtie, despite the fact that it was not a work day. He wondered if Aziraphale slept in the thing. The combination of the casually rolled-up shirtsleeves and the proper, perfectly tied neckwear was ridiculous, and ridiculously hot. 

"Oh, what's that you've got there? Is that a word game?"

"Yeah. It's a puzzle of some sort. A code or a cipher, I think. I'm kind of stuck, to be honest."

"I've been told I'm excellent at puzzles and logic games. I do the crossword every day. If … if you'd like some help, that is. I don't mean to presume."

"Sure," he said reflexively, because he was not going to deny Aziraphale something so trivial, especially if it meant he might stick around. "It's—uh—for a story I'm thinking of doing. Don't tell anyone, all right?"

"Your secret's safe with me," said Aziraphale with a small smile, mirroring Crowley's own words to him on the day they'd met. It was probably inadvertent, Crowley told himself sternly. A common enough phrase. 

Aziraphale set his books down and took the seat next to Crowley, so that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder. "Now," he said, "Why don't you show me what you've got."

Crowley showed him the four original gibberish messages, and Aziraphale asked questions, but only about the puzzle itself, never about its origins. Somehow he'd caught on to Crowley's unspoken inability to tell him more, and somehow he knew not to push. Together they stared at the words on their individual scraps of paper for some time, companionably sharing theories and suggestions.

"Aha!" Aziraphale exclaimed with satisfaction after some time. "I think you were right after all. It _is_ a cipher, but not with the first letter of each word. It's the first letter of each _line_ , and each message might represent a different word. This one is only two letters, an x followed by an i _._ That's an excellent place to start! There are only so many two letter words."

He began scrawling notes excitedly, while Crowley stared at him; Aziraphale had a way of wrinkling his forehead in a particularly charming way when he was deep in concentration.

"Yes! If that first word is _do_ , I think that works. Shift everything six letters up and there we go. This one would be _buy._ "

"That's brilliant, Aziraphale! Gosh. _You're_ brilliant."

He thought he saw Aziraphale catch his eye and blush, ever so slightly, before turning away to focus on the remaining words.

Agnes' message, when fully deciphered, read: _do not buy btmx._

"What in the world does that mean?" asked Aziraphale, frowning. "B-t-m-x? That's not a word. Maybe we got it wrong after all."

"No, wait. I think it's correct. Look. It's a stock symbol," said Crowley, scrolling through search results on his phone. "Some middling tech company called Betamacks. Their stock looks volatile as hell."

"Well, _do not buy_ sounds like a given, then."

" _Do not buy_ could also mean _sell._ Maybe she's telling me to short the stock."

"She? Who are you talking about?"

"Ag—nobody. Sorry. Was thinking out loud."

"Anyway, you _can't_ be serious, Crowley. You can't make investment decisions based on—what, exactly? A game? A brainteaser you found in the paper?"

He imagined himself for one moment telling Aziraphale the truth: _A strange woman I met in an abandoned park at midnight, who knows more about me than anyone should, who might be clairvoyant for real._ Aziraphale would think him delusional, as crazy as Agnes; he would pity him at best and would run away screaming at worst. 

Crowley kept the truth to himself. Instead he said, hopefully, "I think there will be more of these. For, ah, research. For, y'know, my story." He had no idea what Agnes' time frame was, only that she had said there would be more, but if new ads did not materialize soon, he thought he might invent some for the sole purpose of having an excuse to spend time with Aziraphale.

"If you're asking for my assistance, then all right," said Aziraphale with a small smile. "But you'll have to do something for me in return. Tit for tat."

"Sure. Whatever you want." It was a miracle that Aziraphale was actually speaking to him, and he was willing to do anything for it to continue.

"Have dinner with me on Monday."

There was a long pause during which Crowley's mouth struggled to form sounds, and he didn't even want to think about what his face was doing. Finally, he managed to stutter out, very eloquently, "What? Dinner?"

Aziraphale giggled nervously. "Oh. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I just meant, I have to review a lot of restaurants for the paper, and servers always twig the gentleman dining alone as the restaurant critic. I thought if I had a dining companion, they’d just think I was a regular person there with a— a friend."

"A friend," repeated Crowley dumbly.

"Well, a colleague, I suppose. And besides, if there are two of us, we can try twice as many dishes. It would be at no expense to you, obviously, if you're worried about that. The paper will pay for it. They've always said I could bring someone along when I dine. And well, why not take advantage of that?"

"So let me get this straight. You basically want me to be your ... restaurant beard?"

"That's a bit of a crass way of putting it, but I suppose you could say so, yes."

"I thought you didn’t want to _fraternize_ with the likes of me."

"I still don't think it would be a good idea to be too friendly at work. Gabriel is very adamant that our two sides not associate with one another. I imagine Beelzebub is too."

"Then what's all this?"

"Call it a mutually beneficial arrangement, if you'd like. Off the record, off course. I'll help you with your puzzles, and you'll help me with my dinners."

They shook on it. Aziraphale's hand was as warm as he remembered.

* * *

Crowley had a little money saved up (not having to pay Tracy for the suit had helped), and had generally invested it in fairly safe, conservative ways. Still, despite Aziraphale's admonition and pretty much all common sense everywhere, he'd decided that he was going to trust Agnes. He couldn't have said why, except that he had a _feeling_. (And all right, maybe he was just feeling lucky, because he'd spent all afternoon with Aziraphale, and he was going to dinner with him on Monday, even if it was just a mutually beneficial arrangement between colleagues.) He shorted as much Betamacks stock as his account could handle, and was somehow not at all surprised when he ended up nearly doubling his initial investment.

Crowley was, after all, more inclined than most, for obvious reasons, to accept the possibility that some people had seemingly miraculous abilities that defied logical explanation. 


	5. What's in a name?

True to her word, Agnes Nutter placed more classified ads in the months and then years that followed, never with any warning after the first time, nor on any sort of regular schedule. It became part of Crowley's routine every evening before he left the office to check the next day's galleys for anything that smacked of cryptic prophecy. When the messages were eventually deciphered, they yielded more stock tips or, once, what appeared to be a random series of numbers. He wondered if they were lottery numbers at first, but he'd never heard of one that utilized decimal point numbers; besides, the lottery seemed too obvious, too _easy_ , for Agnes. These numbers turned out to be location coordinates, along with a date and time. The Serpent was, not too long afterwards, coincidentally in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to prevent a confrontation that could very easily have escalated into a murder.

It had occurred to Crowley that acting upon apparently-prophetic stock tips might amount to some form of insider trading, but he wasn't as concerned about this as he probably ought to have been. He was not interested in becoming a paragon of virtue just because he was a hero (depending on whom you asked, anyway). In addition, he thought it unlikely that his lucky and somewhat reckless stock trading habits would arouse suspicion, because he was certain that Agnes had his back. She'd know exactly how much he could get away with.

Aziraphale continued to aid him in deciphering the ads, as per their unofficial agreement, and even seemed to enjoy doing so. As Agnes had warned, the messages became increasingly more enigmatic and difficult to decode, sometimes taking days or even weeks of puzzlement and perusal, but since this gave him a ready-made excuse to spend those days or weeks with Aziraphale, it was not nearly as frustrating as it might have been. His own personal motivations for wanting Aziraphale's aid aside, Crowley did not think he could have figured out the majority of the riddles on his own. Agnes was particularly fond of book ciphers, for one thing, and seemed to have a knack for picking all of Aziraphale's favorite books and never a single one of Crowley's.

Very occasionally, Crowley was able to solve the puzzles himself by the time their weekend meetings came around. In those cases, he kept this knowledge carefully to himself and worked it all out all over again with Aziraphale. The pleasure of the shared accomplishment was well-worth the little deception, as were the sudden flash of sheer joy that came over Aziraphale's face when the clues fell into place and the way he clapped his hands together in pure delight when he realized that the code could be found in the pages of _Hamlet_ or _The Importance of Being Earnest_.

Agnes being Agnes, there were unpredictable stretches of time, weeks or sometimes even months, when no new messages appeared. Crowley grew adept at finding the most difficult cryptograms and ciphers on the Internet to tide them over during these dry spells. The idea of just waiting, with no convenient excuse to meet with Aziraphale, did not bear thinking about. He told himself that the decoy puzzles served an important purpose, to prevent Aziraphale from growing suspicious of the provenance and deeper meaning behind Agnes' coded messages. Besides, practice made perfect, and they had to keep their minds honed for when the real ones inevitably appeared without warning.

They met at the library at first, and soon enough the library became the café, which had the advantage of caffeine (for Crowley) and snacks (for Aziraphale). Sometimes, when something stronger than coffee was required, they repaired to the wine bar, which they discovered was all but deserted mid-afternoon. There was also a wooden bench beside the duck pond at the park, which was perfectly situated in the shade on pleasant, sunny afternoons, because everyone needed some fresh air and a change of scenery once in a while to keep their minds sharp.

Each one of these meetings to discuss Agnes' puzzles was paid for, in turn, by a trip to a restaurant, or an ice cream shop, or a bakery. Those were the terms of their Arrangement, plain and simple and clear as day. Crowley was writing a story about cryptograms and Aziraphale was reviewing dining establishments, and they were just helping each other out in a mutually beneficial way. It was the only sensible thing to do.

Of course, Crowley had not written a single story about cryptograms in the nine-plus years since they'd begun their Arrangement. Aziraphale _had_ written a large number of restaurant reviews (two per week, as per his contract with the paper, along with various longer, more involved pieces), but had also dragged Crowley to the Ritz five times in a two-month period, claiming that he wanted to be thorough with his review, and no review had ever materialized either. He had, in fact, already reviewed the Ritz's dining room very favorably several weeks prior to their initial encounter at the library, a fact that they both knew perfectly well. (Trips to the Ritz, after that initial burst of activity, had lessened somewhat in frequency in the years since, but not so much that the staff there did not still recognize them on sight.)

They ignored each other for the most part at work, although naturally it was unavoidable, working in an office that was not so very big, that they'd bump into each other every so often in the elevator or at the coffee machine (never mind that Aziraphale didn't even drink coffee). Through some quirk of his strange biology, Crowley could pick out the sound of Aziraphale's voice on the phone or in conversation with a colleague from across the room, could identify it by the way its particular cadences sang in the hinge of his jaw and sent minute, shivery vibrations down the side of his neck. It had never once occurred to him to tune it out, to relegate it to the background the way he did with the voices of everyone else in the office.

For Crowley, all of the unspoken things were only the tip of the iceberg, and so long as they weren't spoken aloud, he retained plausible deniability. ( _Oh, no, I'm not the Serpent, how silly would that be? Do you see_ him _going around wearing sunglasses all the time? Oh, no, I'm not in love with Aziraphale. Isn't it obvious that we're on opposite sides? We just have an Arrangement, we're not even friends…)_

If someone had pressed, although no one ever had, he could have shown them his phone, where there was no entry in the address book for Aziraphale, although he did text someone called _Angel_ with alarming frequency.

The nickname had just slipped out one evening, at the end of a pleasant, languorous five-course meal. Aziraphale hadn't said anything in response, but Crowley had caught the tail end of a small, pleased smile on his mouth, pursed around a spoonful of something rich and sweet. The smile could just have been for the chocolate mousse, but at the very least the name hadn’t spoiled his appreciation for the dessert.

He'd said it again, deliberately but casually, when they'd parted for the night. _Good night, Angel._ The soft smile he'd received back that time had been definitely, undeniably, fond.

In truth, it had been a relief to let that one slip. It was one less secret, albeit a small one, that he had to keep from Aziraphale.

* * *

The first thing Crowley purchased with his new, Agnes-derived wealth was a 1926 Bentley, meticulously restored, a car that he had been dreaming of for years. It was perhaps his longest-held desire, although not his deepest one, not anymore. Unlike other things, though, the vehicle was something that was ultimately attainable, given sufficient funds and tenacity.

It was sleek and black and stylish, and moved faster and with more finesse than seemed possible for a car of its age. Much of the latter was due to his mechanic, a young man named Newton Pulsifer whom Tracy had introduced him to. (He had not asked, and did not want to know, in what capacity Tracy herself was acquainted with Newt. As far as he knew, Tracy did not even own a car, only a zippy little motor scooter.)

Newt worked exclusively on classic cars, a niche career choice which Crowley found perplexing at first, although an incident early in their acquaintance suggested a possible reason. A previous owner had installed a comparatively modern CD player in the Bentley, which had come to Crowley with a _Best of Queen_ CD stuck inside. Newt had been unable to remove the disc, and had in fact somehow managed to make the problem worse, so that the player would start blasting random tracks from the CD out of the blue, as if possessed. Newt, sheepishly, had admitted with characteristic understatement that he had a rather antagonistic relationship with most modern electronics; he did not own a smartphone, and the less said about the time he'd tried to drive a Tesla the better. Still, there was no denying that he was a wizard when it came to making the Bentley go, and go faster and with more style than most modern cars out there.

It was a good thing too that Crowley was already familiar with Newt’s classic car-whispering prior to discovering exactly what kind of vehicle Newt himself tooled around in. (To be fair, the Reliant Robin was a very rare beast indeed, but some creatures, in Crowley’s opinion, should be allowed to go extinct.)

The Bentley was even better, as it turned out, with a passenger to share it with. Aziraphale made quite the picture, the first time Crowley picked him up in the Bentley, perched primly on the leather bench seat in his bow tie and old-fashioned jacket and perfect posture. He marveled at the shiny instrument panel and made appreciative noises about the perfectly restored chrome and leather interior. Even the way he tutted disapprovingly and gripped the handle, white-knuckled, when Crowley accelerated, fast and sharp and joyful, around a turn, was perfect. He looked for all the world like he _belonged_ there, in Crowley's car and in Crowley's life. (If only, thought Crowley wistfully, he didn't have an entire other life, secret and solitary, to make things unbearably complicated.)

The Bentley was, if he was being honest, mostly for Anthony J. Crowley and only incidentally for the Serpent. The truth was that, while it was as sleek and dark and speedy as his alter ego, he was rather more protective of the car than he was of his own skin. He did occasionally drive it in the course of his evening activities, if Agnes or the police scanner sent him far afield from his normal, downtown haunts. (How else was one to get to the suburbs, after all? It wasn't like the Serpent could just call a taxi, and the trains did not run at three in the morning.) With his hood off and sunglasses on, and a dark jacket over the suit, he looked like a more-or-less normal person on his way to wherever normal people went in the middle of the night in fancy classic cars.

On these outings, he tended to leave the car several blocks away from the Serpent's ultimate destination, well out of the range of any stray projectiles, sources of fire, vengeful miscreants, or anything else that might harm it. If anyone happened to notice a very distinctive black vintage Bentley near where the Serpent had also been sighted, it wasn't really such a strange coincidence. Everyone knew that the Bentley belonged to a dedicated investigative reporter, after all, and he was just doing his job, showing up with all haste at the scene of a breaking story.

* * *

Eventually, Crowley amassed enough in his accounts to afford a nicer flat. It was located in a rather tony neighborhood near the river, not far from the _Times-Observer_ 's offices. New Eden being the sort of large, mercurial city whose character changed dramatically by the block, the gritty downtown neighborhoods where the Serpent did most of his nighttime patrolling were within walking distance.

The flat he purchased was located in the penthouse of an aggressively modern building, all angles and glass and dark steel. The interior space resembled nothing so much as a large, cold monochrome box; it did not, he had to admit, have much in the way of charming character, but was spacious and boasted high windows and skylights that washed the place with brilliant sunlight during the day and cool moonlight at night. Most crucially, it was a blank canvas that he could remodel to his own specifications, because he had decided that if he was going to do this superhero thing, he was going to do it with style, and that meant having a secret lair. Said lair was accessed through what appeared to be a blank, featureless concrete wall at the end of a long corridor, past the doors for the kitchen and living room and bedrooms; if one knew where the hidden access button was located, the entire wall became a door that rotated smoothly and silently on a central axis to reveal a capacious room beyond. He'd perfected the timing so that he could saunter down the hallway, reach out with a seemingly casual swung arm to hit the concealed switch, and sweep through the dramatically spinning secret entrance without having to break his stride at all. (There was, of course, nobody to witness him putting on this show, but he derived great satisfaction from it nevertheless. Even though Aziraphale would never see it, Crowley could imagine his reaction: a fond shake of the head and a grin hidden poorly behind his hand.)

The renovation work was done by a grumpy old man named Shadwell, who was (as everyone in Crowley's life who wasn't affiliated with the paper seemed to be these days) some kind of acquaintance of Tracy's. It had been slightly concerning that she had introduced Shadwell by saying, "Don't mind him if he asks how many nipples you have. Everyone's got their kinks, dear." However, since Crowley had precisely two (very human) nipples and a generous pool of cash for his renovation project, Shadwell had been more than happy to take on the project and did not ask any awkward questions about Crowley's unorthodox design choices.

The secret lair was, Crowley had to admit, probably overkill. It was twice the size of the master bedroom and had high ceilings and a broad, circular skylight that made it appear even more spacious. One full exterior-facing wall was made entirely of one-way glass, fully opaque from the outside and perfectly crystal-clear from the inside.

If all of the secrets he was keeping took up actual, physical space, he'd need a fortress, and then some, to hold them all. But since they did not, all he really had to hide in the room were his suit and a spare, some extra handcuff-bracelets and spools of rope, and a small file full of Agnes' messages and the notes he and Aziraphale had made about their translations. It would all have easily fit in a single box at the back of a normal closet, but that was beside the point.

The only pieces of furniture in the room were an antique table and a matching, ridiculously ornate, high-backed chair done up in gold gilt and blood-red velvet, which Tracy had, acting as his proxy, acquired for him from one of her wealthy clients. There was a wall safe too, the most secure type that money could buy, concealed behind a painting. Crowley owned absolutely nothing that he needed to lock up inside a safe within a secret room, but it had seemed like something a lair should have. He filled the rest of the room with a profusion of houseplants, because, thanks to the skylight and the tall, vaulted windows, it had the best natural light in the entire place and it seemed a shame not to take advantage of that.

* * *

Crowley was not particularly interested in being a "good" person, whatever that meant (case in point: highly suspect, classified ad-derived insider trading tips; also that one time he’d used his powers to climb onto the ceiling to glue a small army of rubber frogs above Hastur's desk after everyone else had gone home for the day). He did, however, believe in journalistic integrity, which meant that he tried his hardest not to write articles about himself, although once in a while there was no way to slither out of the assignment without revealing too much. In those cases, he compromised by reporting as factually and impartially as he could, relying heavily on quotes rather than describing things in his own words. (It was not his fault that grateful rescuees and awestruck bystanders tended to use embarrassingly effusive superlatives when describing the Serpent's lethally graceful moves.)

On one occasion, he'd pled writer's block and implored Aziraphale to finish the article for him. He'd floated the idea as part of their Arrangement; in return, he had promised to accompany Aziraphale to a production of _Hamlet_. Crowley preferred the funny ones, as Aziraphale well knew; thus this was _clearly_ a concession he was making for the Arrangement, and nothing more. (Neither of them brought up the fact that Aziraphale was a food critic, not a theater critic.)

The resulting story, like all good news reportage should be, was objective and consummately professional, without a hint of opinion or judgment. Nevertheless, it was still secretly exhilarating to read something that Aziraphale had written about the Serpent. It was also shocking how well Aziraphale could write in his style, like he'd practically been inside Crowley's head and shared his thought processes. Crowley thought he could do the same, should the tables be turned and he had to mimic Aziraphale's voice for a review. The story still bore Crowley's byline upon publication, but the important thing was that _he_ knew the truth, bugger all what anyone else thought. Well, anyone aside from Aziraphale, who for his part had sworn that he did not mind.

Still, by and large, most of the articles in the _Times-Observer_ about his alter ego were written neither by Crowley nor by Aziraphale, but by Crowley's colleagues, who were more senior and therefore allowed first pick of assignments. He found this state of affairs gratifying in more ways than one: that the Serpent's exploits were apparently juicy enough that his fellow reporters were falling all over themselves to write about them, and that this meant that potential, unavoidable conflicts of interest were rare. The unfortunate downside was that he could not control his own narrative, resulting in a succession of not-entirely-superlative monikers granted by Hastur and others of his ilk at the _Times-Observer_ and other news outlets throughout the city, to say nothing of the online commentariat.

There was "SuperSnake", which was not terrible compared to some of the others, but lacked dignity. "Mamba Man" didn't even make sense because mambas were _green_ , for Someone's sake, not black and red. (This particular name became exponentially worse when some wise-ass commenter came up with a full set of lyrics for _Mamba No. 5_.) "Danger Noodle" and variations thereof were unsurprisingly and upsettingly popular, and elicited far too many cutesy drawings of him curled up in bowls of spaghetti, dressed up with meatballs and marinara, or slithering out of instant ramen packets. "Aspman" was just insulting, honestly, and the less said about "The Hissy Fit" and "Mister Hisser" the better.

Others referred to him as the "Demon of New Eden." This was probably meant to be an insult, but Crowley had to admit he kind of liked that one.

(If he was being honest though, nothing, not a single one of these ridiculous names, was half as bad as when people called him "Tony".)

In any case, it was patently ridiculous that nobody seemed to be able to get a simple, classy, stylish name like "The Serpent" right.

* * *

Crowley and Aziraphale always parted after dinner, or at the very latest after a drink or two at a bar or pub. Aziraphale had, in a casual, offhand way, invited Crowley back to his place for a nightcap a few times near the beginning of their acquaintance; Crowley had always refused with a nonchalant "maybe some other time," forcing his face into a casual neutrality and turning away alone down the darkening street. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. On the contrary, he wanted to so badly it hurt. But Aziraphale was so clearly a creature of rarefied light, of bright sunshine in the park and warm yellow lamplight at the dinner table, and Crowley’s nights were given over to shadows, to dark rooftops and grungy alleyways. He knew that if he were to accept the invitation, he would never be able to leave. All the shadows and all the lights would bleed together, and all of his secrets would be laid bare before Aziraphale.

Aziraphale had stopped asking if he wanted to come back to his place after a while, although sometimes it seemed that neither of them could resist dragging their evenings out, ordering a second dessert to share or one last postprandial glass of port to savor slowly as their conversation meandered seamlessly from one topic to the next and the restaurant emptied out and grew quiet around them.

That was as far as things could go. The golden afternoons and twilights and lamplit early evenings were for Aziraphale, and the lonely midnights and dark, wee hours of the morning, when even the moon had set, were for the Serpent. There were lines and boundaries, and they had to hold firm lest Crowley's secrets come to light. It had been nine years by now, and he was still telling himself this. He was, undeniably, in love with Aziraphale, and he could never act upon it. That was just how things had to be. He did not have a choice.

It was second nature to dissemble, to hide, to compartmentalize. Even if he could ever say anything to Aziraphale, which he could not, he wouldn't even know where to begin. He wore his secrets wrapped around himself like his suit, like armor; they had grown, bit by bit, into a thorny cage wrapped around his yearning heart.

It was enough, their Arrangement, this strange, arms-length stasis they found themselves in, full of unspoken, undefined things.

It had to be enough.


	6. A heart in a fortress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out this [adorable art by glissando365](https://glissando365.tumblr.com/post/627834087335411712/this-fandom-has-a-devastating-lack-of-crowley-as-a) of Crowley as Danger Noodle inspired by the last chapter!

_Present day_

The evening had gone like they all seemed to, these days. A long, leisurely Saturday night dinner, drawn out longer and longer with dessert, and a cheese course, and coffee or tea, and finally a glass of port to round things out. (It was imperative, Aziraphale had declared, that they try the full experience so that he could write a thorough review. He had _standards_.) They'd solved another one of Agnes' riddles together earlier that afternoon, and Crowley was feeling flush with success and warm with Aziraphale's continued proximity. 

They lingered at their table after all the dishes had been cleared and the bill paid, waiting for the chef to emerge from the kitchen so that Aziraphale could offer his sincerest compliments, and again on the sidewalk outside to finish a spirited discussion about dolphins. Eventually and inevitably, though, the evening, like all their evenings, had to end. Crowley slid reluctantly into the driver's seat of the Bentley, and, still leaning halfway out the door, offered to give Aziraphale a lift home.

"No thank you, dear. I think I'll walk. Clear my head a little," Aziraphale said, and after a moment's hesitation, added, "It's such a nice evening out, it seems a shame not to enjoy it for a little longer."

Crowley did not say anything in return. The rejection stung, even though it was not by any means the first time it had happened, even though the drive would have been ten minutes at most. Ten more too-short minutes together before they'd have to part anyway in front of Aziraphale's flat. _I ought to be used to it by now_ , thought Crowley bitterly, gazing at the stiff, straight line of Aziraphale's back as he strode around the corner and out of sight; he seemed to be walking faster than normal, as if he couldn't wait to be gone from Crowley's sight. He told himself that it was probably for the best that they part now, that he not yield to the temptation to prolong the evening, to shift the demarcations of their friendship in dangerous ways, in ways that he could not have and that Aziraphale did not seem to want.

He drove home, fast and reckless, only to put on his suit and slink back out into the darkness. Ordinarily, donning the suit gave him a jolt of purpose and direction, but tonight it only seemed to enhance the jittery, restless feeling that had been plaguing him since he'd parted from Aziraphale. The streets were uncharacteristically quiet, as if mocking his nervous energy. Even the weather was balmy and perfect, no chance of rain or thunder. _Such a nice evening_ , as Aziraphale had said earlier. _Too nice for the likes of you, Crowley._ He found himself wishing for a small petty robbery or minor act of vandalism to break up the monotony of his patrol, some physical altercation to distract himself with, but there was no one to thwart but himself. Instead, he found himself hopping from rooftop to rooftop above the sleeping city, alternating between overanalyzing Aziraphale's behavior and pondering Agnes' latest message, which had exhorted him to _Seek thy heart in the fortress._ It sounded like a silly platitude, or the hook from a banal pop song. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn that it was one of the puzzles he'd pulled from the internet to tide them over during the unpredictable periods when Agnes went quiet. But this one was entirely authentic, and, even after the cipher had been decoded, frustratingly opaque. In a particularly low moment, he wondered if Agnes had just been having a little joke at his expense, poking fun at his lonely, barricaded heart. But Agnes was not one to be so cruel, nor were her messages ever so insignificant as to be mere jest. He found himself, unsurprisingly, wishing that he could ask Aziraphale, but that would have required revealing too much about the nature of the message, and by extension himself. And so, like so many other things, he was relegated to mulling it over alone, here in the dark.

Eventually, Crowley's aimless prowling took him to the Armory District, which was named for the now-defunct munitions depot that had once been located there during the days when the city of New Eden had been nothing more than a dusty frontier town. The building itself was still present at the center of the neighborhood, a large, imposing structure of dull grey stone owned (and mostly neglected) by the city. It was used infrequently as exhibit or convention space, and occasionally housed squatters who were evicted on a semi-regular basis, but otherwise stood empty most of the time, in a state of mild disrepair. The area around it, a mixture of industrial buildings, ramshackle apartment blocks, and poorly maintained, often shuttered, storefronts, was rather rough, although younger, hipper people liked to call it edgy and up-and-coming. In its favor, there were innovative restaurants and trendy nightclubs; he'd accompanied Aziraphale to several of the former, and was a good ten years too old to have much interest in the latter. Nevertheless, he was primarily familiar with it as a place where people got mugged or worse, a place where the Serpent had no shortage of things to do. It was not the sort of neighborhood one wandered around alone in after hours, unless one was looking for trouble.

It was nearing three in the morning, and even the coolest late-night clubs and bars had shut down for the night. Even the troublemakers had all gone to bed, it seemed. There was nobody around, no criminals or innocents, just Crowley and the armory, looming darkly above him.

He glanced upward at the high walls of the building, which were finished at the top with decorative crenellations in a vaguely medieval style. Understanding struck him all at once. The armory was a _fortress_ , or as close to one as he'd find within the city limits. He still had no idea what Agnes meant by his heart, which he was fairly certain was still safely beating within the cage of his ribs, but he was certain that there was a reason his seemingly idle wanderings had brought him here tonight.

His restlessness redirected itself into a focused, purposeful clarity. Cautiously, keeping to the deep shadows along the base of the wall, he peeked around the corner at the front face of the building. In the moonlight, he could see the main entrance to the armory, an imposing set of heavy, wooden double doors reinforced with dark iron strips. In front of the door, a large man paced back and forth, alternating between peering impatiently down the street and glancing at a phone clutched in his left hand. Whomever he was expecting to emerge from the empty street beyond, it was most certainly not the Serpent, as the almost comical look of surprise on his face made clear. The man was strong but slow, and although he managed to land a couple of hefty punches that would surely bruise later, he was no match for Crowley's superior, faster reflexes and enhanced senses. Within a few minutes, Crowley had him incapacitated and gagged on the sidewalk, his wrists and ankles tied securely with a series of knots Tracy would have been proud of. 

Crowley dragged the man, who was making muffled, angry noises through the gag, around to the side of the building, where he wouldn't be immediately seen by passerby. He was carrying no wallet or identification, and had nothing of interest on his person except for the phone. It, unfortunately, was a burner, indicating that he was not quite as dumb as he seemed, or, perhaps more likely, was working for someone with some measure of sense. (On the other hand, he had not bothered to password protect the device.) There was only one number in the short call history, corresponding to several incoming calls from earlier that night and a single outgoing call about thirty minutes earlier. Even as he was looking for any other information on the device, it lit up, the ringer blessedly silent, with an incoming call from the same number.

Crowley had to think quickly. If he ignored the caller, it was likely that whoever was calling would know immediately that something had gone wrong. He took a deep breath and answered the call, pitching his voice low and trying to sound like the man he'd just bested. This took of necessity some guesswork, as his familiarity with the man's voice was limited to five minutes of grunting and angry cursing, but hopefully the caller would chalk any oddness up to a poor connection.

"We're on our way," said a voice on the other end. "Everything still good over there?"

"Ah… something's come up," he improvised. "Better wait a bit while I, uh, take care of it."

"Fuck. Bosses ain't gonna be happy about this, man," said the voice, with a nervous laugh. "And you know how they get when things don't go their way. Just ask that soft fucking pansy you've got locked up in there."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry," said Crowley hurriedly, trying to sound sufficiently cowed at the thought of the caller's apparently very scary bosses. "It's not a big deal, promise, but just gimme thirty minutes, alright?"

"Fine. Thirty minutes. It's your head."

They hung up abruptly. Crowley stashed the phone in his boot and assessed his situation. He had thirty minutes to find and liberate whatever _soft fucking pansy_ had gotten himself kidnapped and locked up in here. If he burst in through the front door, he ran the risk of alerting anyone else who happened to be in the building, and that was assuming it was unlocked in the first place. It was a good thing then that the Serpent had other options. Why use the door when he could use a window?

The building was old, and it was clear that the city had not bothered with maintenance for some time. As a result, several of the tall, vaulted upper windows had visibly cracked or broken panes. They were far enough off the ground to discourage commonplace vandals and trespassers from entering the building that way, but their height was no obstacle for someone who could traverse vertical surfaces as easily as horizontal ones. A quick survey revealed a promising entry point, a window at approximately second-story height with one narrow, rectangular pane of glass that was completely missing; it would be a tight squeeze, but he'd slithered through smaller openings before without much trouble. In a matter of moments, he had shimmied up to its level and was peering inside to see exactly what he would be getting himself into. 

The single, large, high-ceilinged room inside was striped with moonlight and mostly bare, aside from a pile of what appeared to be broken furniture and other assorted junk in one corner. Midway along one wall, someone wearing a long, light-colored coat was sitting on a low wooden stool with their back to him, casting a long, eerie shadow across the bare floor. He caught a glimpse of pale blond hair, glowing like a halo where a line of white moonlight, sprinkled with dust motes, shone across the crown of the person's head. There was a heavy metal chain attached to a ring in the stone wall nearby. From this angle, Crowley could not see where it terminated, although it was clearly restraining the person on the stool somehow. Something smelled tantalizingly familiar, a little woodsy, a little citrusy, a very tiny bit like toasted caramel. It was warm and sweet and pleasant on his tongue, nothing like what he would have expected in this dusty, run-down building. He felt the urge to open his mouth, to flick out his tongue, serpent-like, and drink in the scent; he resisted the temptation, with some difficulty, because he had more urgent business to attend to, like rescuing whatever poor sap was chained up here, and the clock was ticking.

The faint outlines of the large exterior doors were just visible at the far end of the room. There did not appear to be anyone else present besides the seated figure. It seemed that the man he'd subdued outside had been the only guard, a fact that told Crowley that he had not considered his prisoner to be much of a threat.

He carefully worked his body through the window, starting with his arms and head, allowing his hips and spine to stretch and flex to accommodate the narrow opening. Once inside, he slithered down the interior wall until he was close enough to the ground to drop down without risk of injury. This process took some concentration, as the window was small enough to require significant contortion and the wall smooth and featureless. He preferred not to slide headfirst onto the concrete floor if at all possible; he managed it, but barely, landing awkwardly on his hands and knees with a quiet hiss. He was, as a result, both somewhat distracted and not looking at the person on the stool when he heard a voice that he would know anywhere.

"And who on earth might you be?"

Crowley startled and looked up at the sound of that voice. It was nearly as familiar as his own. He'd imagined it over the years speaking to him in all manner of situations, but never anything like the one he found himself in now, still in the process of getting up from the floor, with the knees of his suit covered in dust and his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Their eyes met. Speech and locomotion and probably several of his other abilities deserted him all at once, because the person sitting there on the rickety stool wearing handcuffs and chains and a curious, hopeful look on his face was *Aziraphale.


	7. Snake rakes and crepes

"Hello?" inquired Aziraphale again, a little impatiently, when Crowley failed to respond.

"Gnnpnkfgk… sssssss… Ssserpent," he finally managed.

It had been a long time since Crowley had inadvertently and so thoroughly slipped into sibilance, but at the moment it felt like a triumph. The hissing was at least somewhat comprehensible, in comparison to the garbled, choked-off consonant sounds that had preceded it.

Of all the people in the world that he could have found locked in that room, he had never imagined it would be Aziraphale. His angel, sitting there striped in moonlight and shadow, wearing handcuffs and chains. His demeanor - knees and heels pressed primly together, perfect posture, shackled hands clasped demurely in his lap - was both a striking contrast with his predicament and so perfectly familiar that it made Crowley's heart swoop with recognition. How many times had he sat beside Aziraphale on a park bench or at a café table and noted that exact set of his shoulders, that precise tilt of his jaw? Suddenly the smell made sense too: the top note was the scent of Aziraphale's cologne, the same one that he had been wearing for all the time they'd known one another, overlaid upon his shampoo and his soap and the loose-leaf tea that he always drank. There was something else there as well that was unique to Aziraphale. To Crowley's heightened senses, every person had their own intrinsic smell, independent of external fragrances. He had long since grown accustomed to ignoring people's particular scents, but certain ones, apparently, had cemented themselves into his unconscious. He knew, he realized, _exactly_ what Aziraphale smelled like.

Aziraphale was wearing a cravat, of all incongruous things, a spill of pale silk down his neck and chest. He had not been wearing it earlier in the evening when Crowley had last seen him. The rest of his clothing and body showed evidence of a struggle. There were long, dark streaks of dirt along the sides and back of his jacket and trousers, which he would surely fret over later, and his hair was more mussed than normal and curling damply with sweat. The cravat, however, had somehow remained utterly pristine, its delicate white fabric entirely unmarred.

"I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding," Aziraphale said, in a measured, soothing voice. "I'm sure we can sit down and work this out like civilized adults. No need to resort to violence."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Do you mean to say that you're not with those hooligans that seized me earlier?"

"No! Course not! Not a hooligan!" stuttered Crowley indignantly, flailing his arms. "I'm here to rescue you. _Obviously_."

"Oh. Well, in that case, hello. How do you do? I apologize for my rudeness in assuming you were one of them. My name is Aziraphale. I'd offer you my hand to shake, but—" He chuckled, in a gently self-deprecating and very familiar way, and rattled the chain looped around his cuffs. 

"Did they hurt you? I'll— I'll—" 

"I'm fine. A little shaken up, perhaps, but I'm not injured. I didn't even see them coming up behind me on the street outside. There were two of them. They had me in these cuffs before I could fight back. It all happened so quickly. Then they dragged me in here and chained me up. They left not long after that. I heard one of them saying he was going to go get someone, and that he'd be back soon."

"But— _why?_ "

"I haven't a clue. It must have been a terrible misunderstanding of some sort. Perhaps they mistook me for someone else. I can't imagine what on Earth it could be otherwise. They didn't even bother to rob me! Although they did take my phone, I assume so that I couldn't call for help."

"What were you even doing out at this hour?"

"I was restless. I had a lot on my mind, and I couldn't sleep. Usually, when that happens, I read, but I couldn't even concentrate on my book. So I thought that instead of lying wide awake in bed fretting about all the things that I want and can't have, I would go for a walk. Clear my head."

"In _this_ neighborhood? You're far from—" Crowley snapped his mouth shut abruptly, as his mind caught up. He'd been just about to say "you're far from home," but the Serpent would not know where Aziraphale lived. He was not even supposed to know who Aziraphale _was._

He cleared his throat to cover up his flustered state and tried again. "Um. What I meant. My point _was._ You seem a respectable sort. Not the kind of person that normally lurks around this part of town at this time of night."

"Well, to be fair, I'd started out further uptown, and it was only a little after midnight then. I hadn't really planned on coming down here. But then I got peckish."

" _Peckish?_ "

"There's a lovely little diner just a few blocks from here that's open until two in the morning. They make surprisingly good crepes," said Aziraphale, sighing. "They're filled with Nutella."

"Of course there is," muttered Crowley, trying not to be distracted by the dreamy look on Aziraphale's face when he talked about Nutella.

"And ordinarily I like to think I'm fairly aware of my surroundings. But I must admit to letting my mind wander tonight. I was thinking about crepes, and … other things, and I probably wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been."

"It's not your fault!"

"I know that. But I do feel rather embarrassed for letting myself get caught like that. You must think me very silly, dear."

"You're not silly," insisted Crowley. "Although what in the world are you wearing _?_ Is that a _cravat?_ "

"I have standards! It is simply not done to don a bow tie for a midnight jaunt!"

"And so you decided to put _that_ on instead? Who even owns a cravat these days?"

"Well, there's no call to be uncivilized, is there? Besides, the bow tie is rather conspicuous. You see, I'm the restaurant critic for the _Times-Observer_ , and sometimes it's nice to just go out incognito for a bite to eat without everyone in the restaurant making a big fuss and bending over backwards to please me."

"I've heard of it," said Crowley vaguely, to keep up appearances. _I only spend every day staring at you through my sunglasses from across the newsroom, fantasizing about untying that damn bow tie._

Now he had a cravat to add to the fantasy to spice things up. 

"And you thought a cravat would be … oh, how did you put it … less conspicuous?"

"Well, yes actually," said Aziraphale, a little shortly, and then added, holding out his cuffed hands, palms up, "As much as I would love to keep chatting with you— might I perhaps get a little help with these first?" 

"Oh, right," said Crowley. The chatter and banter with Aziraphale had progressed so naturally, so comfortably, so _familiarly_ , as conversations between the two of them always had, even from the very beginning, that he'd nearly lost track of the urgency of the situation.

The cuffs were thick and clunky, far bulkier than the streamlined, folding pair Crowley carried as part of his kit. A wide, flat hinge connected the two sides; the chain that protruded from a large ring on the wall was looped twice around this center panel and secured with a large padlock. Unfortunately, despite the rust and grime on the metal, everything appeared strong and solid, without any obvious weak points.

If Aziraphale had been restrained with rope, it might have been possible to cut or untie it. Tracy had given him a couple of impromptu lessons over the years on how to tie and untie a variety of complex knots, which had often come in handy when restraining criminals like the man he'd left in the alley outside. He'd even shown some aptitude for it, with his long, slim fingers. (He could untie that ridiculous cravat with ease, he was sure of it. The fine silk would be supple and yielding as his fingers slipped between the folds of the knot, the hollow of Aziraphale's throat smooth and warm beneath it.) 

But he couldn't unravel steel, and none of the tools concealed in his boot were large or strong enough to break even a single link of the chain. 

The man outside had not had any keys on his person, for either padlock or handcuffs, which meant that his accomplice must have taken them with him. If the prisoner had been anyone else, Crowley would have gone looking for the kidnappers who were sure to come back at some point with the key, or as a last resort sent an anonymous tip to the police, to let them deal with the locks while he watched from a safe and hidden distance. Surely they had implements that could cut through metal, and it wouldn't hurt the victim to be locked up for a few minutes longer. 

But this wasn't just anyone, it was Aziraphale.

He couldn't leave Aziraphale alone and in chains. Not even for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. He couldn't risk waiting for someone to come back with a key and potential hurt. He couldn't let Aziraphale think that the Serpent had abandoned him.

He couldn't bear the thought of anyone else saving Aziraphale.

For all his strange, inhuman abilities, for all his desires, Crowley could not just snap his fingers and miracle away chain and shackles. That left picking the locks as his only viable option. The problem was that lockpicking was not among the skills he had acquired before or since becoming the Serpent. Shadwell, who occasionally worked as a locksmith in addition to renovating homes, had offered to teach him once; he regretted declining the offer now, bizarre and unprompted though it had been. He knew the theory of it, of finagling tiny, intricate tools into indentations and crevices, a puzzle to be solved with fine motor skills and concentration, but he'd never actually _done_ it, nor did he have any of the requisite tools. For all the dexterity of his fingers, they were still orders of magnitude too large and clumsy to fit into tiny keyholes.

Aziraphale was looking at him, and maybe it was a trick of the moonlight, but he was looking at Crowley like he trusted him, like he had faith in him. Like he was a _hero._

Crowley found himself, as he so often did, gazing at Aziraphale's mouth; it was very slightly open, the tip of his tongue just visible between parted lips. The sight of it awoke a familiar, bittersweet ache in his chest, but it also spurred another thought, something that was so audacious that it might just work.

Shadwell had shown him his set of lockpicking tools once, an impressive array of tiny picks and wrenches in many different sizes and shapes. There had been one in particular, which he remembered because of the name, called the _snake rake_ , a long, thin, flat pick with a sinuous curve to its edge that was used to seek out and depress several pins in a lock at the same time. 

Crowley did not, of course, have a snake rake or any other lockpicks on his person, but _he could do really weird things with his tongue._

Aziraphale still had that expectant, hopeful look on his face. He could not disappoint him. He would not disappoint him. 

If this didn't work, it was going to be _humiliating_.

"I'm going to try something. Don't look, okay," he murmured, fixing his gaze on the cuffs so as not to have to meet Aziraphale's eye. "This is probably going to be pretty gross, if we're being honest here."

He would have to remove the padlock first. The chain it secured had been looped in such a way as to make accessing the keyholes on the cuffs themselves difficult if not impossible. He brought it up to eye level and squinted at the tiny keyhole. At rest, his tongue appeared outwardly human, if perhaps a little longer and more agile than average, but it had various muscles and nerves that human tongues lacked. With a little concentration, he was able to extend, flatten, and narrow it into a rough facsimile of an appropriately-sized snake pick. He took a deep breath and plunged the tip into the keyhole, squeezing his eyes shut as he did so. Eyesight was completely superfluous for this particular endeavor, and he did not want to throw off his concentration by accidentally catching Aziraphale's eye in this midst of this undignified procedure. 

The first thing he noticed was the taste, which was an unpleasant combination of rust and old metal and generalized grime. Old pennies, passed back and forth between hundreds of dirty hands and left forgotten in dusty corners, probably tasted much the same.

The benefit of using his tongue over a pick was that he only needed the one; he could simply bend and twist it into the exact shape that was most suited to the contours of the lock's interior mechanism. He contorted it to fit into the crevices and divots, tensed the muscles, and pressed down with the flat, putting more pressure on the spots where he could feel a slight give in the uneven surface. It was surprisingly easy to locate each of the five pins and engage them with a gentle press here, a light downward flick there. When everything was in place, one final, firm twist of his tongue was all that was needed to convince the lock to turn smoothly into the open position, with a faint click that he felt rather than heard. He withdrew his tongue from the keyhole with a grimace and an audible expression of disgust, the taste lingering like stale wine in his mouth, and pulled the padlock open with his hand. There was a heavy metallic slide and clang as the chain slipped free and snaked down onto the concrete floor.

It had worked. Holy shit, it had _worked._ Giddy, incredulous relief spread through him, and he felt his mouth quirk involuntarily into a smile. 

He dared to raise his eyes. Aziraphale was looking back at him, wide-eyed. There was an expression on his face that was not the disgust or horror that Crowley had steeled himself to expect. Not at all. It was something more akin to fascination, mixed in with a good dose of wonder.

"You, my dear," Aziraphale breathed, "are a _marvel_."

Crowley felt himself blushing; he was silently thankful for the hood of his suit for concealing his ears, which were almost certainly as red as his hair. He ducked his head, mumbling, "C'mon then, let's see the cuffs. Clock's ticking."

Aziraphale obligingly held his manacled hands up for inspection, wrists facing upward. With the chain gone, the two small, matching keyholes on either side of the central hinge of the cuffs were exposed and accessible. In order to reach them with his tongue, Crowley had to put his mouth distractingly close to the thin line of exposed skin, with its delicate blue veins, between the metal band of the handcuffs and the pressed fabric cuff of Aziraphale's shirt. Aziraphale's bare palms were below his chin and neck, and a tiny, warm space of air was all that separated them. If Crowley were to let his head fall just slightly, his chin would drop softly, perfectly, into the cradle of those two hands.

The smell of Aziraphale's skin was intoxicating. Crowley felt his breath move softly out of his open mouth and ghost over his upper lip as he worked. He wondered if Aziraphale could feel it too, continuing along its way, tracing a soft, warm path against that stripe of pale skin, tickling his pulse point. He allowed himself to imagine, for just a moment, flicking his tongue out to follow the same path: his own lip, the tiny space of air between them, the trembling pulse in Aziraphale's wrist.

He did not, of course, rest his chin in the cup of Aziraphale's hands, nor did he taste Aziraphale's skin. Both gestures would be inappropriate and most likely unwelcome, and so they were relegated to his own imagination. Instead, he forced himself to focus on the task at hand. 

This keyhole was quite a bit smaller than the one on the padlock, and it was a tight squeeze, even with his tongue stretched out and narrowed as far as it could go. However, it was also shallower, requiring only the very tip of his tongue, and simpler, with only a couple of pins and tumblers to negotiate. Thankfully, it was much cleaner as well; there was still a noticeable metallic tang, but it did not make him feel as though he was sucking on a handful of loose change.

The clicking of the pins as they engaged translated to his senses as minute vibrations, like irregular footsteps or heartbeats in miniature. The way the pressure against the underside of his tongue was echoed by the pinging in the hinge of his jaw was an odd sensation even for someone as deeply familiar with odd sensations as he was. He could feel the vibrations of Aziraphale’s heartbeat too, its closeness a little distracting, its regular thump a little more rapid than normal. Being chained up, he imagined, would most likely make anyone a little anxious. Despite his jittery pulse, Aziraphale held his hands steady, without a hint of a tremble, allowing Crowley to work easily. 

Even here, even in chains, Aziraphale was his anchor.

He had the first cuff open in under a minute. The second one was even easier, now that he had figured out the trick of it, how the tumblers rolled under the sweep of his tongue. Nevertheless, he was tempted for a moment to draw out the process, to keep his mouth close enough to Aziraphale's skin to brush it with his lips, but the clock was ticking, every second bringing them closer to a confrontation that he would much rather avoid. (It might have been different, had he been alone, but he would not, could not, risk Aziraphale.) 

With a final flick of his tongue, the second cuff popped open, exposing the entirety of Aziraphale's wrist, which was marked with a faint line of red where the metal had been pressed against his skin. Crowley watched the manacles plummet to the floor and land with a metallic clank. 

"Oh, _thank you,_ " said Aziraphale, rubbing his just-freed wrist with his thumb. "Those were quite hideously uncomfortable, I must say."

He stood up, and almost immediately stumbled, pitching forward in Crowley's direction. Instinctively, Crowley raised his hands to catch him, gripping the sides of his upper arms. Aziraphale remained mostly upright thanks to this intervention, although his body continued its forward momentum, his torso thudding against the Serpent symbol emblazoned on Crowley's chest. 

Ordinarily, they kept a careful, small distance between each other, a few inches of space that felt to Crowley like a chasm he couldn't possibly leap, even after standing on the brink for hours. It was a shock, then, to have his arms suddenly full of Aziraphale, to have the warm, solid weight of him against his body. He felt like the breath had been knocked out of him, and he did not think it was just from the impact. His suit felt, all of a sudden, hot and constricting, his pulse rabbit-fast. 

He had never once considered the possibility that the space between Aziraphale and Crowley might not exist between Aziraphale and the Serpent. 

A long moment passed, in which neither of them moved, and then Aziraphale looked up at him.

"Oh, my, you do have beautiful eyes, don't you?"

It was not at all what Crowley had expected him to say. He was used to abject fear or mildly horrified fascination when people first caught sight of his strange eyes, not breathless, wide-eyed wonderment. He opened his mouth and closed it again without any sounds emerging. He could not do anything except stare back at Aziraphale, whose eyes, he thought, were far, far more lovely than his own.

"Oh, goodness," said Aziraphale, with a nervous titter, as if he had suddenly become aware of their position. "I'm terribly sorry. My feet seem to have fallen asleep from being stuck on that stool for so long. All pins and needles."

He moved minutely backward, so that their bodies were no longer touching, except for where Crowley's hands on his upper arms still steadied him. He shifted gingerly from one foot to another, testing out his balance, and eventually said, "There. I think that'll do. You can let go now. I promise I won't fall."

"If you do, I'll catch you." 

Aziraphale smiled at this. He took a few steps and indeed did not fall, although he did bend over for a moment to pick up something from the floor beside the stool and put it into his pocket.

"We'd best get a wiggle on, then," he said. 

Crowley bit back a snarky, fond retort, because _get a wiggle on_ was one of Aziraphale's favorite and most patently ridiculous turns of phrase, and Anthony J. Crowley would never miss an opportunity to tease him about it. 

They really _did_ need to get a wiggle on though. Crowley judged that they still had roughly ten or fifteen minutes before their thirty minutes grace period was up. It was probably best to use that time to get as far away from here as possible. He said as much to Aziraphale, who agreed, and they hastily exited the building, using the front door this time. They made their way rapidly through the darkened maze of streets, away from the looming bulk of the armory. As they walked, Aziraphale cast a wistful eye toward a darkened block of shops, shuttered for the night.

"I never did get those crepes," he said with a sigh. "And now it's too late. Everything's closed for the night. It's too bad. I would have offered to buy you some, as a thank you. Not that I think something as inconsequential as some crepes could even come close to repaying you for rescuing me. Oh, goodness. I suppose it's rather presumptuous of me to assume you'd even want to. I don't even know if you _like_ crepes. Although they _do_ come in both sweet and savory varieties. Something for everyone."

Aziraphale was babbling a little, a thing Crowley knew he was prone to doing when nervous. It was understandable; he _had_ just been kidnapped, and they were not out of danger yet.

Crowley could take or leave crepes, if he was being honest, but he could not think of a single thing he wanted more at that particular moment. An image coalesced in his mind: the two of them, sitting across from each other in a red vinyl booth in an all-night diner somewhere, the slow, buzzy flicker of a neon light outside, curls of steam swirling up from mugs of just-shy-of-too-hot coffee, the low, soothing hum of late-night radio music from somewhere behind the swinging kitchen doors. Crowley in his Serpent suit, Aziraphale in his cravat. Gold eyes meeting blue over the table. This vision, fantasy though it was, seemed only a little bit more surreal than their current situation. 

It would have been entirely impractical to stop for a snack while in the midst of fleeing from Aziraphale's erstwhile kidnappers; nevertheless, Crowley silently cursed the crepe shop for being closed. Out loud, he said, trying to sound nonchalant, "You don't have to. Feel obliged, I mean. I'm just doing my job. I don't expect a reward."

"I know I don't have to," said Aziraphale softly. "I _want_ to."

"Oh. For the record, I do too. Want to, I mean."

They had emerged out of the dark, run-down streets around the armory by now, and were walking quickly down Garden Boulevard, the main commercial thoroughfare in this part of town. Here, despite the late hour, there were still signs of waking life: occasional cars zipping past, a security guard visible in the lobby of a glass-fronted office building, a brightly-lit twenty-four hour convenience store on the corner. In front of the last was a cab stand, where several taxis were parked, their bored drivers leaning against their vehicles chatting and smoking. 

Aziraphale gestured toward them and said, "Well, I'll just grab one of those taxicabs then, shall I? Thank you ever so much, again, for the rescue. I won't say it was a pleasure; I'd rather not get locked up again. But nevertheless… I _do_ hope we'll meet again someday. I still owe you some crepes, after all."

Crowley fought the urge to stop Aziraphale from going, to not let him out of his sight ever again. What was he going to do? Insist on awkwardly walking Aziraphale home like an overprotective parent? It wasn't as though he could just offer Aziraphale a ride in his Bentley, even if it had been somewhere nearby and not safely parked for the night in the garage below his building. Practically speaking, a taxi really was the best choice at this point; it would put distance between Aziraphale and any potential pursuers much more quickly than his own two feet, especially since, unlike Crowley, he was limited to traveling at ground level.

"Are you sure?" he asked anyway. "Wouldn't want you to get kidnapped again." 

"I assure you I'll be fine, dear. I'm not as helpless as I look. I'll be home in two shakes of a lamb's tail." 

And with that he was halfway across the street, looking back with a smile for the Serpent.

"Stay safe, angel," murmured Crowley softly, for no one's ears but his own. 

Aziraphale approached the first cab in the line and chatted briefly with the driver before getting into the back seat. As the engine started up, Crowley was already halfway up the side of the nearest building. He watched from the rooftop as the taillights faded into the distance, carrying Aziraphale further and further away. 

He would not be comfortable until he saw for himself that Aziraphale was safe at home, and so he began making his own way back to Aziraphale's neighborhood, sticking to the rooftops and deep shadows whenever possible. It was a quiet journey, and he encountered nothing suspicious or worrisome. It was not until later, when he was watching Aziraphale's familiar, stout silhouette pacing back and forth in front of his lamplit window and the nervous flutter in his stomach had finally subsided, that he realized he had missed the opportunity to go back to the Armory and perhaps discover who had been behind the kidnapping. He could not bring himself to regret the choice; Aziraphale's safety was worth more than any amount of knowledge.

* * *

They were both looking a bit worse for wear at the office the following Monday, although Crowley at least had the advantage of his sunglasses, which hid the dark circles under his eyes. He was also sporting, underneath his clothing, a rather impressive bruise on his right hip where the man he'd fought outside the Armory had managed to land a lucky blow. It wasn't anything major – nothing was broken, and with his enhanced healing it would probably begin to fade in a day or two – but it did mean he was sore and stiff, and walking with a slight limp. His jeans, which were particularly (and, currently, painfully) snug around the hips, were not helping matters any, but at least they looked stylish. He tried to cover the injury up with an exaggerated version of his normal saunter, with only middling success; he'd already clipped several errant office chairs and knocked a pile of papers off of someone's desk by the time mid-afternoon rolled around and the sleep deprivation caught up with him.

Coffee. Coffee would help. The closest, if not the most high-quality, source of caffeine was the break room down the hall. The coffee machine was, unfortunately for him, set atop a counter with unreasonably pointy corners, one of which he promptly careened into immediately upon stumbling into the room. The cursed thing had nailed him directly in the center of his bruised hipbone. 

" _Fuck_!"

He leaned against the edge of the offending counter on his good side, wincing and gingerly rubbing his hip. At least there hadn't been anyone else present to witness his ignominious defeat at the hands of yet another inanimate object.

Or so he thought. Someone cleared their throat. He looked up, to see Aziraphale standing in the doorway, a concerned look on his face. 

"Are you all right, Crowley?" 

"Fine. _Ow._ Fuck. 'M fine. Just, erm, you know, trousers. Yeah. Trousers. This pair is just a bit tighter than normal. There's an art to walking in 'em. Harder than it looks."

"Oh, right. Of course," Aziraphale said, looking inexplicably pink and flustered. "Trousers, right. They're very … ah … form-fitting, aren't they?

"Besides, furniture is my _nemesis_."

"If you say so, dear."

"Counters are right bastards, they are. And don't get me started on _chairs_."

"Most dastardly, chairs. They're out to get you, I'm sure," agreed Aziraphale with a bemused smile. "How was your weekend?"

 _Oh, you know. Little bit of this, little bit of that. Learned a new trick with my tongue. Rescued an angel. Managed to fall even more in love with you. I know, I didn't know that was possible either. Got home and spent the rest of the night on the ceiling fantasizing about untying that bloody cravat at your throat. Discovered that it's impossible to stay on the ceiling while wanking._ "Nothing much. You?"

"Oh, I had a bit of excitement. I met the Serpent."

"Don't tell Hastur. Or maybe do. He'll die of jealousy. He's always going on about _gettin' an interview with that slippery bastard._ How in the world did you meet him anyway? He just come knocking on your door?" 

_If only it were that easy. If only I could just knock on your door and beg you to let me slither in._

"If you must know, he very kindly helped me out of a wee spot of trouble. I went out for crepes and got a little tied up. It was nothing really."

"What was he like?"

"Nice."

" _Nice?_ He doesn't seem like he'd be a _nice_ sort to me. Dangerous, maybe. Edgy. Mysterious. Nice is for, I don't know, bunny rabbits and things like that. Soft things. Things the Serpent probably eats for lunch."

" _I_ thought he was nice," retorted Aziraphale. "Don't give me that look, Crowley. Nice is a _good_ thing. I _like_ soft. And I think he does have a soft side. He's far more down to earth than I expected. He seemed a bit … bashful. Definitely not the sort to eat bunny rabbits. He'd be more likely to rescue them and set them free, if you ask me."

"C'mon, Angel, he's got to be more than just nice," pressed Crowley. He couldn't help himself.

"Well… he can do some _very_ interesting things with his tongue."

" _Can_ he, now? And how might you know that, pray tell?"

"Oh, hush, you," said Aziraphale, red-faced and clearly embarrassed. "In any case, I would dearly like to talk to him again. He seemed a most intriguing fellow. And the way he moves—you should have seen it, Crowley. I've never seen anyone move with such grace. It was remarkable."

"It's the suit," muttered Crowley under his breath. 

"What was that, dear?"

"Uh, nothing. I was just saying that I bet _his_ trousers aren't trying to kill him."

"His are rather more stretchy, I daresay. But never mind about that. I've had the strongest craving for crepes all weekend, and I never did end up getting any. There's a new creperie that's opened up over on Water Street; I've been thinking about reviewing it anyway. What do you say we give it a try tonight?"

"Have they got the Nutella ones? 'S not a good creperie if they don't have Nutella."

"Of course they do."

"Then you're on. I'm done here by six."

"Me too, but I need to stop by the cleaners' after work first – one of my favorite jackets got rather beaten up over the weekend. I do hope they've been able to get the stains out. I've kept it in tip-top shape for so long, I'm rather angry at myself for being so careless. And I have to go get a new phone."

"Don't tell me you're finally getting a phone made in this century. Will wonders never cease."

"I suppose I shall be forced to, won't I? I don't think they still make my old model. Shame that I lost it, really; it was so reliable. Anyway, my errands shouldn't take more than a couple of hours at most. I can meet you at the crepe place at eight."

To Crowley's disappointment, the cravat did not make an appearance at the creperie that night. He was more than mollified, however, by the sight of Aziraphale rapturously tucking into his crepes, which were generously filled with warm Nutella and glazed with caramelized sugar. The sounds he was making suggested that they really might be good enough to be worth getting temporarily kidnapped over.

Watching Aziraphale eat crepes was _definitely_ worth it. 

Aziraphale paused in his thorough appreciation of the crepes to pull something out of his briefcase.

"I wonder if I might ask for your help with something, Crowley. A personal project. I know it's not really part of our Arrangement, but… I would really appreciate it."

Crowley’s eyebrows shot up of their own accord and he gaped at Aziraphale, his ears going red, because the thing that Aziraphale was dangling over his plate of crepes was a pair of handcuffs. The last time he’d seen them, he’d been up close and personal, his mouth inches from Aziraphale’s skin, the acrid metallic taste of the keyhole all confusingly mixed up with the smell of Aziraphale. 

"Oh, don’t look at me like that," said Aziraphale, flushing in turn. "It’s not what you're thinking, I swear. I'm trying to figure out where these came from. For an … investigation of sorts."

"How'd you get your hands on them, anyway?" 

"I—I can’t tell you more, right now. I’m sorry.” He sounded hesitant, and distinctly uncomfortable.

Crowley tried to recover, to defuse the odd tension. He forced one of his eyebrows down, and affected a sardonic twist of the mouth. “A new concept restaurant, then?”

“Something like that,” laughed Aziraphale.

“I’d name it ... oh, how about _Bastille_?” He gestured grandly with his fork, indicating the crepes on the table between them. "For those who like a little light bondage with their crepes?"

When he'd recovered from his fit of giggles, Aziraphale grew serious. "You're always asking me to help you with puzzles, Crowley. Consider this my turn. Please."

"Of course I'll help, Angel. What's so special about these?"

"I'm not sure, yet. But look. There's a sort of symbol here, you see?"

There _was_ a symbol, a tiny logo embossed on the wide, flat part of one cuff, on the reverse face from the keyhole. He hadn't noticed it last night, but the room had been harshly shadowed and he'd been distracted by other, more pressing things. It was very intricate and detailed, for such a small mark, and depicted a quartered circle containing, one in each quadrant, a sword, a pair of scales, a crown, and a skull.

"You sure that's not just the logo of the handcuff company?"

"I looked it up. It's not the logo of any company that makes handcuffs, as far as I could tell. But I thought you might take a crack at it. You're much better at this sort of thing than I am."

"Yeah. Course." He could ask Tracy, he supposed. She knew a lot about handcuffs.

"Thank you so much, dear. You're a godsend."

"Don't say that. Not sent by any god, me," he retorted.

There was a minute or two of silence, in which Aziraphale contemplated his crepes and Crowley contemplated Aziraphale. Eventually Crowley said, "You know you can always ask me for help. With anything. With whatever. It's more than just an Arrangement between us. You know that, right?" 

He was remembering the way Aziraphale had complimented his eyes two nights ago, and something about that made him bold, or just bold enough to venture the statement.

"I… I suppose I do," said Aziraphale softly, his eyes fixed on the table.


	8. Quite the escalation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: there is some discussion of a past death which is assumed to be due to an eating disorder. If you wish to skip this part, stop reading at the paragraph that begins with “Crowley had a vague recollection of the story…” and resume at “Still, it was highly suspicious.” I’ll put a brief summary in the end notes if you choose to skip this section.

"Oh, good _Lord_ ," said Aziraphale with exasperation. "I reviewed that restaurant last month. It was _dreadful_."

It hadn't been overly difficult to identify the distinctive symbol on the handcuffs, once Crowley had called in a favor with one of his contacts in the city's municipal records division. It belonged to a holding company called Four Horse, which had been incorporated several years earlier and was headquartered in downtown New Eden. Four Horse owned several properties in the city and a good number of disparate businesses, an esoteric, varied portfolio of heavy industry, shipping, and retail. The owners were listed as C. Zuigiber, P. Chalke, R. Sable, and D. Azrael. Aziraphale had recognized the third name, Raven Sable, as the proprietor of a recently opened, trendy downtown restaurant, _Third Seal_ , which he had, indeed, reviewed quite negatively in a recent issue of the _Times-Observer'_ s Sunday magazine.

Crowley remembered the review as well, in part because it was the rare restaurant that Aziraphale had dined at alone, Crowley having had a prior engagement that night. There had been no second visit, which was also rare in and of itself. Aziraphale had written what was possibly the most critical review of his entire career, soundly panning the establishment in incisive, brilliant language.

> _"…all smoke and mirrors, cheap parlor tricks, and absolutely zero substance. The theme here is clearly a trendier-than-thou minimalism. A skilled restauranteur can turn minimalism into an art, showcasing a single ingredient or a masterful preparation. A perfect oyster, unadorned and fresh, can be the very pinnacle of gastronomic delight. Not so here. The grey, rubbery, tasteless bivalve I was served had been overcooked to a point beyond death and made me want to weep with unremitting despair._
> 
> _My favorite dining companion makes no bones about his strong distaste for fruit on salads, but I daresay that on this occasion he would have cheered heartily had there been a strawberry or a grapefruit segment or, indeed, anything even remotely appetizing, on the limp lettuce leaf that masquerades as a salad here. My dear C, be glad that you did not have to sit through this utter travesty of a dining experience with me._
> 
> _If ever there was the culinary equivalent of a post-apocalyptic wasteland – bleak, dreary, and lacking in all sustenance for both body and soul – this place would be it. In fact, it drove this reviewer straight into the tawdry, greasy embrace of a late-night kebab house. The kebabs, I'm afraid to say, came out by far the winner in this contest._
> 
> _Third Seal leaves one with a bad taste in the mouth and a hunger in the belly that is not at all satisfied by its meager, subpar dishes. One could be forgiven for assuming that it must be a front for shadier operations, because there is no other reason in creation a restaurant this mediocre could continue to draw customers.”_

"Are you saying that this was retribution? They kidnapped you for a _bad review_?" asked Crowley incredulously. "That's quite the escalation, even for a review this bad. Sure, you were a glorious bastard about it, but _nobody_ liked this restaurant. I mean, have you seen the reviews online? I've never seen so many one-star ratings in my life. Are you sure there isn't something deeper going on here?"

His reporter senses (which were just as sharp as his snake senses) were twinging.

"Well, I shan't be cowed into writing false reviews," said Aziraphale mulishly. "But I do agree with you that this warrants further investigation."

"It absolutely does."

"Wait a minute," Aziraphale said suddenly. "How did you— how did you know I'd been _kidnapped_?"

Oh, _shit_. Crowley opened and closed his mouth a few times. Nothing came out.

"Nmpshgk," he finally managed, while he frantically tried to come up with a coherent, halfway-believable justification in his head. "Um. Well, you— you told me you met the Serpent, yeah? And he helped you out. I'm sure you didn't just mean that he helped you decide what kind of crepe to order. And then you had those handcuffs. So, um… I … ah, put two and two together? With my finely honed reporter senses, obviously." He was warming to this; raising an eyebrow, he continued, "Unless you just _happened_ to have a pair of handcuffs lying around. You could have told me, you know."

"I was— well, I was _embarrassed_ , Crowley. I didn't know how to tell you."

"You know I won't judge, Angel. Not you. I'd never judge you."

"I know that, I do. But I didn't want you _worrying_."

"Well, you've got me there. I'm worrying now."

"Don't. Please. I've got this under control, I promise. Now that I know who's behind it, I'll— oh, I don't know, send them a strongly worded letter or something."

"Seems to me this lot won't respond well to a strongly worded letter."

Aziraphale ruminated on this for a moment, and then a devious spark came into his eye. "You know, when I wrote that line about wondering whether the restaurant was a front for something shady, I was just being sarcastic. But this makes me wonder whether I might actually have been on to something. And well, if they want to up the stakes, then I'm going to figure it out. Will you help me, Crowley?"

"Yeah. Of course. Whatever you want. I'm all yours."

"Oh, thank you, dear."

"Just—be careful, okay? Don't you go getting yourself kidnapped again."

* * *

In the days that followed, Crowley and Aziraphale met nearly every day, over dinners and teas and impromptu trips to the park, to discuss their new project. They'd always met like this, of course, under the guise of working on Agnes' puzzles or doing "field research" for Aziraphale's restaurant reviews, but never with this degree of frequency. If there hadn't been the underlying threat to Aziraphale's safety, Crowley would have been utterly elated. 

They began by investigating Raven Sable, as he was the clearest link to Aziraphale, and the only one of the four who had any sort of clear motive for wanting to harm him.

Sable had opened his first restaurant in New Eden about two years earlier, an establishment called _Chow._ Like _Third Seal_ , it had catered to the young and hip, focusing on the hottest new trend in the dining world, which at the time had been upscale cafeteria-style service. Also like its successor, the food had been routinely criticized for being unappetizing, expensive, and meager. Aziraphale had never bothered to review it. To no one's surprise, _Chow_ had not stayed in business for very long. During its short life, however, it had made it into the news at least once, for something completely unrelated to its subpar food.

Crowley had a vague recollection of the story coming across the news desk a year ago, but he hadn't given it much thought at the time. It had, after all, warranted only a brief single-paragraph article by a junior reporter on page ten of the paper. A woman had been found dead in a restroom at _Chow_ by the cleaning staff one night after closing. The coroner had ruled the cause of death to be heart failure due to an eating disorder, as evidenced by her severely emaciated and malnourished body.

Now that he was looking at the story with a fresh and far-more-critical eye, however, there were some things that just didn't add up. Frannie Williams had worked as a paramedic for fifteen years, up until she had quit three weeks prior to her death. It wasn't a job one could do while half-starved, thin and weak to the point of pain. Every paramedic Crowley had ever met had been strong, able to heft heavy, unresponsive patients onto stretchers and subdue thrashing bodies, and some quick research revealed that physical fitness was indeed a hard and fast requirement for the job. There was a photo of her, taken three months before her death, at a work event, looking hale and fit, without the dark undereye circles and gaunt features and limp, thinning hair she'd died with. It was a stark contrast to the shocking photos in the autopsy report; if he had to guess, she'd lost at least a third of her body weight by the time she'd died. 

Frannie Williams had kept a fairly prolific personal blog. The police had, of course, also read through it, and listed it as evidence that she'd been mentally unstable. Two months before her death, she'd written: 

> _Couldn't sleep again last night. I think I need to look into getting stronger sleeping pills. I couldn't stop thinking about work. It seems like every shift these days is getting harder and harder. Every time we go out on a call, it's is like diving headfirst into a whirlwind of feelings. They don't even feel like my own sometimes. It's so draining. Maybe I've been doing this job too long._
> 
> _Today, there was a mother who'd called 911 because her child had fallen down the stairs in their house and gotten a concussion. The mom was crying, and the kid was crying, and everything was chaos. I swear, the minute I walked in the door, I felt a tidal wave of panic-fear-pain-guilt hit me. I wanted to cry too. It was like it was MY child lying there on the ground, and it was all my fault that she had been hurt, and also somehow like I WAS the child, scared and confused and in pain._
> 
> _And then after we'd gotten everything sorted out and determined that the child was fine, the mom hugged me in thanks, and I felt such an overwhelming wave of gratitude and relief wash over me. My knees felt weak with it._
> 
> _They tell you in EMT training that empathy is good, but also that you have to keep a level head, even when, especially when, everything around you is chaos. I used to be good at that. Compartmentalizing. But now. Now. All I seem to be able to do is feel, everything, and it's too much. I never know if I'm going to suddenly want to scream, or cry, or even laugh. It's all too much. Maybe I'm just losing it. I don't know what to do._

There were several other entries along much the same vein, all mentioning how she felt like she was being bombarded from all sides by a deafening clamor of emotions and feelings. It was worst at work, where nearly every situation was frantic and emotionally charged. She'd quit her job, eventually, and had become afraid to leave her house, to interact with people. The emotions, she wrote, were manageable, so long as she didn't come into close contact with anyone else. 

On the surface, her blog entries read like someone undergoing a mental break, which could certainly have been attributable to a spiraling eating disorder. A sad story, but nothing more. And yet it reminded Crowley uncomfortably of his own experiences after he'd been bitten: the sudden, dizzying onslaught of impossible new sensations and abilities, the paranoia, the feeling that he might be losing his mind.

The final entry in Frannie's blog, dated the day before she died, was brief:

> _Someone contacted me in the comments of the last post and said he might be able to help. He sounds like a bit of a quack, honestly, but at this point I'll try anything. Going to brave the outside world and go meet him tomorrow evening. Wish me luck._

The authorities had decided that Frannie Williams' death was due to natural causes, as the medical examiner had not found any evidence of drugs in her system nor any other signs of foul play. Thus Raven Sable's involvement appeared to be nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence of place and time.

Still, it was highly suspicious.

Unbeknownst to Aziraphale, the Serpent conducted his own investigation into Sable one night, setting himself up on a neighboring rooftop, binoculars in hand, to watch the restaurant. _Third Seal_ was nearly empty, evidence that Aziraphale's poor review (and a good number of one-star reviews online) had had a negative effect on business. Nothing, however, seemed out of the ordinary. The few patrons trickled in and out as the night progressed; nobody seemed particularly elated about their dining experience. At the end of the evening, Raven Sable himself, tall, thin, and impeccably dressed, exited the building and got onto a sleek black motorcycle.

On foot, even using the rooftops as a shortcut, Crowley could not hope to keep up with a motorcycle. Luckily, Sable only traveled a short distance, and the combined sound and vibration of his bike's powerful engine were intense enough for Crowley to know which way he'd gone. His destination was a large high-rise building several blocks away from the restaurant, in an area with a mixture of densely packed office buildings, trendy eateries, and high-end boutiques. Crowley recognized the address as the headquarters of Four Horse Holdings. The building was largely dark, although there were lights shining in several windows on the upper floors. Sable's motorcycle was in the nearly-empty parking lot behind the building, which was shared with several restaurants and businesses. There were two other motorbikes next to it: one that was a glossy, cherry red and clearly had an excessive amount of horsepower, and one that was nominally white, but so splattered with streaks of oil and dirt and other unidentifiable stains, that the color could only be described as _smog._

Crowley staked out the building, and waited until the sun had nearly come up, but neither Sable nor the owners of the other two motorcycles ever emerged that night. It had been a frustratingly unproductive endeavor on all fronts: all he'd learned, really, was that Sable and his friends had a thing for fancy motorbikes.

It _did_ mean that he didn't have to come up with an excuse for Aziraphale as to why Anthony Crowley would have knowledge of whatever hypothetical evidence that the Serpent had uncovered, but that was little consolation.

As for the other three principals of Four Horse Holdings, C. Zuigiber was a name that was passingly familiar. Carmine Zuigiber was an independent photojournalist, who was somewhat infamous for more often than not managing to be first on the scene of various wars and international conflicts. Beelzebub had always refused to publish her stories, officially citing a lack of objectivity and integrity when it came to her subjects and sources. Unofficially, he'd heard them grousing about how Zuigiber was a loose cannon and a bloodthirsty, vengeful sociopath. Given that Beelzebub, by their own admission, was not exactly a gentle dove themselves, this probably meant that Carmine Zuigiber was someone to avoid at all costs.

A perusal of her recent articles (a task which both Aziraphale and Crowley found highly unpleasant, but necessary) only reinforced this notion. Most of them had been published in tabloids or other questionable news sources, and a few on her own blog, which was titled _A World at War_. They all focused heavily on violence and bloodshed and fighting, in a way that far exceeded the limits of objective reporting or good taste. One recent longform article, from six months earlier, was about a bloody civil war somewhere far removed from New Eden; it was, like most of her oeuvre, excessively graphic and written in an oddly gleeful, gloating tone, but what caught Crowley's attention was that it was not the first time that this particular conflict had come up in their research. They'd uncovered rumors earlier, albeit unsubstantiated ones, that one of Four Horse's subsidiary companies had been selling weapons, illegally, to the combatants on not just one, but both sides of the war.

Now, reading Zuigiber's blog, Crowley also noted that a resident of New Eden, a former policeman who'd been fired from the force due to erratic behavior, had been killed in the conflict, a victim of friendly fire.

P. Chalke was Polly Chalke, or perhaps Paul. Sometimes they were referred to as one, sometimes as the other. There was not as much information to be found about them as about Sable or Zuigiber, but from what Aziraphale and Crowley could gather, they were an engineer of some sort who had worked at a number of oil refineries and chemical plants in the area. They'd been working on an oil rig that had exploded several years ago, and at Le Blanc Chemicals, on the outskirts of New Eden, when a fire and subsequent leak in one of the toxic waste storage tanks had resulted in a massive contamination of land and groundwater in the surrounding area. The last incident had been particularly notable, warranting several front page articles in the _Times-Observer_ , both because it was the worst toxic waste spill in the history of the city and because two veteran New Eden firefighters had died in the aftermath, from injuries related to the inhalation of chemical fumes.

The fourth person associated with Four Horse, D. Azrael, was a mystery. They couldn't find so much as even a first name for him, much less any substantive clues as to his identity or activities, no matter how hard they looked.

* * *

Crowley had never been a morning person, even before his transformation into the Serpent had made him, by necessity, into a night owl of the highest order. And yet now he found himself, on three hours of sleep, going to meet Aziraphale at the crack of dawn to discuss their latest discoveries. The lingering orange tint of sunrise in the east, the little wisps of fog that hadn't quite burned off yet, the muted, buzzy hum of the café: all of these things seemed liminal in a way that had nothing to do with lengthening shadows and layered secrets. Aziraphale's hair glowed, silver-white, backlit by the early morning light slanting bright through the window. It was worth the lost sleep, a thousand times over.

"This is quite the dossier we've amassed here," said Aziraphale, indicating the thick pile of handwritten notes and highlighted printouts and other evidence of Four Horse's doings and wrongdoings, all adorned with multicolored tape flags and copious sticky notes, on the table between them.

"Only because you insisted on printing everything out!"

"It's part of my process. You know I work better this way."

Crowley had to admit that it _was_ satisfying, in a pins-and-string-murderboard kind of way, to lay everything out in front of them and draw connections, sometimes literally, between disparate things. It was like one of Agnes' puzzles, writ large.

"Perhaps we could write an article together. An exposé. Wouldn't _that_ be something?" mused Aziraphale, a little dreamily.

"Gabe and Beez would _flip._ Lifestyle and News, sharing a byline? The _horror_. _Yes._ Let's do it."

He could picture it already, the byline. _Their_ byline. _By A.Z. Fell & A.J. Crowley, Staff Reporters._ Their two names, side by side, in the _Times-Observer'_ s stately serif font.

But he was getting way, _way_ ahead of himself. He reminded himself that he had to think objectively, like a reporter, not like a lovesick disaster.

"There's no story yet though. Not really. The problem is that there's no smoking gun. It's fishy, _so_ fishy, but we can't link any of it to them. Not definitively. Everything's circumstantial. That woman who died at Sable's restaurant? Could just be bad timing. The coroner said she died of natural causes. The rumors that Four Horse was illegally selling weapons in war zones? No real evidence except for Zuigiber being in the area, and she's got a legit reason to be there. The oil rig explosion and the chemical spill? Maybe we could make a case for negligence. But they could have been unfortunate accidents, and just because Four Horse owns a majority share in Le Blanc doesn't mean they made any management decisions." Crowley made a frustrated noise. There were the handcuffs, of course, and Aziraphale's kidnapping, but, even though they'd never discussed it, placing Aziraphale front and center of any investigation was unequivocally off the table for Crowley.

"I know, dear. But we'll keep looking. There must be something more substantial that we can link them to. We _will_ get to the bottom of this," said Aziraphale with determination, as he gathered up the papers and placed them carefully into his satchel.

He did not tell Aziraphale of his other suspicion, that Frannie Williams had been more than she'd seemed. That she'd been like him, the accidental recipient of powers that seemed overwhelmingly strange and impossible. And then she'd died, frightened and alone, in horrible circumstances. _There but for the grace of Someone_ , thought Crowley, _go I._

No, not some generic, all-knowing Someone. Specific someones, less omniscient, more precious. Tracy. Agnes. _Aziraphale._

He had no idea what he'd be without them, and no wish to find out. It had been a long, long time, he realized, since he'd felt truly alone.

Aziraphale's companionship over the last nine years was one of the few things that made the strange, surreal circumstances of his life seem grounded and real. Even if it would never – _could_ never – blossom into something more, he felt suddenly, immensely, grateful for their friendship.

"D'you— do you want to get dinner with me tonight?" he blurted out.

"Oh, did you want to work on this some more?"

"I didn't mean… ngk. Not— not for our Arrangement. Just as. As friends. 'S a thing friends do, yeah? Go for dinner? Together. Enjoy a meal, talk about the weather, forget for an evening about the evil criminal enterprise trying to kill you."

"I— Crowley— I can't. I— I have to go to church."

"Oh," said Crowley, deflated. "Never mind. Forget I asked."

"But we— we could maybe go tomorrow night?"

His head was spinning, a whirl of conflicting, confused thoughts. He only became aware that he hadn't responded when Aziraphale said, hesitantly, "If… that is… if you still wanted to?"

"Yeah. Of course I still want to. Tomorrow night. You pick the place. Whatever you like best."

Aziraphale was not one for outright lies. In all the long years of their acquaintance, Crowley had never known him to tell a blatant falsehood. Which was not to say that he was not skilled at half-truths and lies of omission. He _had_ , for example, neglected to tell Crowley that he'd been kidnapped earlier. 

But saying he had to go to _church_ , of all things, and in that flustered, stammering voice. It sounded for all the world like an excuse, and not even a good one. But if the thought of going to dinner with Crowley, without the shield of the Arrangement, was so distasteful to him, then why had he immediately turned around and offered tomorrow as an alternative?

It was true that Aziraphale went to church regularly, on Sunday mornings like everyone else who subscribed to such beliefs. But unless he'd become immensely more devout overnight, Crowley had never known him to suddenly develop the irresistible urge to worship on a random Wednesday night.

Something else _had_ to be going on. Aziraphale was hiding something, he was sure of it.

As the day went on, Aziraphale seemed to grow more and more distracted, fidgeting at his desk and constantly pulling his pocketwatch out of his waistcoat to check the time and nervously fiddle with the lid and chain. Not that Crowley himself was much better, pretending to work while alternating between sneaking glances at Aziraphale across the room and fretting over his odd, shifty response to Crowley's impromptu dinner invitation. When Aziraphale finally left for the day, shortly after five, he had not so much as glanced once in Crowley's direction.

Once it grew dark, Crowley suited up and went on patrol. He allowed himself to make a single pass of the rooftops along Aziraphale's street, to cast one brief, longing glance at the warmly-lit windows of Aziraphale's flat. He appeared to be at home, so the church outing was most likely later in the evening. Crowley imagined that Aziraphale had clear and emphatic opinions about what was and was not appropriate to wear to church, even in the middle of the night. He wondered, briefly, whether the cravat was appropriate church wear. Probably (sadly) not.

He forced himself to leave, to not lurk outside of (or above) Aziraphale's building. It was too uncomfortably similar to how he'd surveilled Raven Sable earlier in the week. Whatever his misgivings about Aziraphale's evening activities, he would not cross that line.

Instead, he made the rounds of the local churches to look for suspicious activity. He'd had to consult a map on his phone before doing so, and had found the sheer number of places of worship in the city both mindboggling and exhausting. Crowley was not overly fond of churches. He'd always been an atheist, or, at his least cynical, a severe agnostic. And besides, the number one antagonist in the Bible was a snake, and more than one priest had publicly denounced the Serpent as a demon from Hell, the second coming of the purveyor of Original Sin. (There were others who counseled forgiveness and redemption rather than damnation, but he didn't want their pity either.) He'd not been inside a church for many years, and yet here he was, about to embark upon a whirlwind tour of all the churches in New Eden.

He began with the ones nearest to Aziraphale's flat, and worked his way outward. Most of them appeared deserted, locked up for the night with no signs of human activity. At the seventh, a relatively small, unassuming stone church about a mile and a half from Aziraphale's place called St. Mildred's, he got lucky. There were two vehicles parked outside. One was a nondescript black sedan, but the other was a large, polished, red motorcycle that stood out like a very loud, very unsubtle fireball in front of the grey stone building and the dark trees. Crowley recognized it as the same one he'd seen in the parking lot at the Four Horse building the night he'd followed Sable.

The door to the church stood ajar, and a person, visible in silhouette, was pacing back and forth immediately inside it. Crowley had been doing his job – both of them – for a long time, and his sense of people acting shifty or suspicious was highly tuned. This person was clearly on the lookout for someone or something, and definitely up to no good. Further inside the church, there were two additional, discrete heat signatures.

Three people, then. He could take three people, easily, if it came down to that.

The Serpent, unnoticed, slunk around the building and shimmied up the back wall of the church. He settled in on the roof to wait, leaning against the steeple with a clear view over the parking lot. While he waited, he kept an eye on the heat signatures of the people inside the church. They did not appear to be moving around much, aside from the one person pacing by the door, although he did notice an interesting anomaly. Human heat signatures usually appeared, to Crowley's eye, somewhere on a spectrum ranging from honey-gold to vermilion, but one of the two inside this church was as close to a true red, without any hint of yellow, as he'd ever seen. This was strange, but probably just an inevitable outlier in a normal distribution of traits, and there were more important things to worry about.

Not fifteen minutes later, the more important thing, dressed in a pale coat, came into view. Aziraphale was wearing a hat, some sort of old-fashioned-looking beige thing with a golden-yellow band. It covered most of his distinctive, pale cotton-fluff hair, but did nothing to render him unrecognizable, at least not to Crowley. He was clutching his brown leather satchel nervously in one hand and breathing a little heavily, as if he'd been walking fast for some time.

Through the roof beneath him, Crowley detected the faint vibrations of hurried footsteps, and a corresponding movement of the heat signature near the door, presumably as the person who'd been watching withdrew from view before Aziraphale could spot him.

Aziraphale passed below the awning over which Crowley perched, seemingly unaware that he was walking into an ambush. His footsteps echoed on the stone porch and grew muffled as he stepped into the interior of the church. His heat signature paused just inside the entrance; the other three were now clustered at the other end of the building. No sooner had Aziraphale resumed moving, than Crowley had slid down one of the front pillars and was himself edging cautiously through the open door.

At the end of the long nave were the heat signatures and indistinct forms of the three people. The back of Aziraphale's coat was a pale, receding rectangle as he walked slowly toward them. There was a certain set to his shoulders that Crowley recognized, the same deliberate, steady, stubborn body language that he projected when he gritted his teeth and said things like _I shan't be cowed into writing false reviews_.

The entryway where Crowley stood was shadowy and dark, but the aisle was lit by two rows of burning candles set into the ends of the pews, and there was a candelabrum with several additional candles, also alight, on the altar at the far end. The golden, flickering candlelight was dim but bright enough that there was no way he could simply saunter down the aisle and expect to retain the element of surprise. 

It would have to be the ceiling then. Carefully, he skirted around the left side of the long, dark rows of pews, hugging the wall, where the pools of light from the candles did not reach. He tiptoed forward as far as he dared, and then hoisted himself up the wall, avoiding the tall, stained-glass windows that might cast his moonlit shadow onto the altar, and onto the ceiling. The crisscrossing wooden beams were old and rather splintery; their roughness prickled at his palms even through the material of his gloves.

Pressing himself as close against the ceiling as possible, he performed a series of tight, undulating motions with his torso that allowed him to make his way above the altar while remaining as flat and undetectable as possible. The wooden beams creaked and echoed at several points despite his care. These small noises seemed very loud to him, and he felt the vibrations from each one as a sharp, snapping ping in his jaw. He tensed each time and froze, but the people below did not seem to notice, or perhaps simply discounted the noise as the inevitable groans and cracks of old architecture. In any case, nobody looked up.

Now nearly directly over the center of the sanctuary, he twisted his upper body around, keeping himself anchored with his lower half and one hand still pressed against the ceiling, so that he could look down. A tall woman dressed in red motorcycle leathers stood behind the altar. Her hair was streaked with a crimson too bright to be natural; in the candlelight, it looked disturbingly like blood. A winged mask, also red, with a design that looked like flames, hid most of her face, but Crowley would bet money that this was Carmine Zuigiber. The two other people, both men, were standing to either side of the altar. All three of them were facing Aziraphale, who had by now reached the end of the aisle.

The woman in red smiled, a hard, harsh curve of red lips and white teeth, and spoke.

"Right on time. We knew you'd see reason. It's all there?"

"Yes, all of it. Everything you asked for. All of our— my research. And the handcuffs I picked up at the scene of my previous… escapade."

"Very good."

"And in return, you'll promise to leave him alone?" 

There was a little clipped tightness in Aziraphale's voice, detectable to Crowley, who had been listening to it for years, but otherwise it was strong and firm, projecting bell-clear up into the shadowed rafters. 

"Yes, yes, of course. We have a deal. Just give it to Mr. Glozier there."

One of the men held out a hand, and Aziraphale slowly stepped forward and passed the heavy leather satchel over.

"Well," he said uncomfortably, taking several steps back to where he had originally been standing. "Now that that's over and done with, I'll— I'll just be going, shall I?"

Crowley, in the meantime, had been assessing his situation. Thankfully, this church did not boast sky-high vaulted cathedral ceilings, which would have made a surprise entrance from above rather more tricky. This roof was high, but not unworkably so, perhaps one-and-a-half or two stories. He peered down, trying to identify the main obstacles on the floor below. The low rectangular block of the altar was at the center of the sanctuary. He himself was overhead and several feet to the left of it, as the flickering light from the candelabrum might have given him away had he been dead center and someone had thought to look to the heavens. Aziraphale stood in front of the stone altar, with the aisle and the pews to his back, and Carmine Zuigiber behind it. To either side loomed the two henchmen; the one on the left, closer to Crowley, stood with his arms crossed menacingly, while the other held Aziraphale's leather satchel in one hand.

Directly below him was a small stone basin on a pedestal, shallowly filled with water. He could make out an occasional tiny ripple, the flicker of candlelight bouncing off a minute wavefront; he himself was too high up and too far in the shadows to cast a reflection. It most likely held holy water, although his mind went immediately to _birdbath._ It was just the right size for a cozy pair of ducks. (He could picture the expression, half exasperated, half amused, on Aziraphale's face in response to this blasphemy.)

There was also something that looked like a large, pale stone lectern fashioned in the shape of an eagle in flight. The far wall, behind the altar, was dominated by an ornate, rickety-looking gilded altarpiece; this, unfortunately, made the option of shimmying down the wall and sneaking up from behind unfeasible, as it looked both unstable and potentially noisy as a means of descent.

His best option, then, was a dramatic mid-air leap. If he pushed off the ceiling at an angle and somersaulted once, he could land on the empty spot of floor next to the holy water fount, behind the man on the left. It was, for him, an easy jump and a clear trajectory. All three of the villains were focused on Aziraphale, which would hopefully allow him to make the first move once he landed.

He readied himself, tensing his muscles, and was just about to spring, when Carmine Zuigiber spoke again.

"We can't allow you to leave. You know too much. I'm afraid you'll have to die, and your friend will have his turn soon enough." 

Her smile had turned into a broad grin. She gestured to the henchman on the left, who produced a gun from somewhere on his person, and said, the command sounding somehow both blasé, as though this was an everyday occurrence, and gleeful, "Shoot him."

As if in slow motion, the man raised the gun to eye level, pointed it at Aziraphale, and placed his finger on the trigger. Crowley's heart dropped out of his chest and smashed into pieces on the stone floor below. He understood, suddenly, what it meant to have your life flash before your eyes, only it wasn't _his_ life at all. It was the life of someone far more important, someone he couldn't possibly live without. He forgot that he was supposed to be clinging on to the ceiling, and there was a limit to how much his snake instincts could take care of on their own. 

Crowley fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you keeping an eye on the chapter count might notice it’s gone up again… would you believe that in my original outline for this story, it was only seven chapters? Ha!
> 
> *
> 
> Here's a brief summary of the cw section, if you skipped it: 
> 
> A woman, Frannie Williams, was found dead in the bathroom of Raven’s Sable’s former restaurant a year earlier. The police assume she died of an eating disorder. Her blog reveals that she was experiencing a strange empathy with other people’s emotions, which was taking a toll on her mental health. The last entry before her death mentions that she is going to meet with someone who’s said he might be able to help.


	9. Swan dive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: There is a big fight scene in this chapter, so there are descriptions of blood, injuries, and someone getting knocked unconscious (pretty much what you'd expect in a superhero movie fight scene).

Crowley’s brain caught up with his body halfway between the ceiling and the floor. He’d fallen, losing his grip on the roof beams and letting gravity win, like an amateur, like he’d been bitten yesterday. How embarrassing.

But perhaps not all was lost. It was highly unlikely that he'd be badly injured by a drop from this height; being able to fall, and, more importantly, land, without shattering himself into a thousand painful pieces was one of the things that his body instinctively knew how to do, although it was by no means _fun._ And as undignified as this entrance was, at least it would be a surprise. Nobody would be expecting the Serpent to just drop in for a chat, as it were, in the middle of a tense standoff.

He was too far away, unfortunately, to be able to do something as direct as landing on the man with the gun, but perhaps he could create some sort of diversion. Something loud and dramatic. Something to draw the gunman’s attention away from Aziraphale. Something that would make a splash.

He kicked out forcefully, his foot connecting with the solid stone of the holy water basin. The impact was immediate and jarring, the recoil reverberating all the way up his leg and into his hip. The force of the kick combined with his downward momentum was sufficient to make the heavy basin topple over with a loud crash. Water arced up from it and splashed in his eyes and face, wetting the edges of his hood and trickling coldly down his neck, before spilling across the floor.

The ground was rapidly approaching. He had just enough time to tuck his legs in close, so as to avoid falling directly on top of the upturned font. For the rest of it, he trusted that his body would know how to fall and how to land; sometimes it was best not to think about it too much.

Instinct did not fail him. He hit the ground in a low crouch, skidding a little on the wet stone before managing to steady himself with one hand. As he'd predicted, he'd survived his swan dive without any broken bones or major injuries. It was by no means the graceful, dramatic entrance he had originally envisioned, but hopefully he had made enough of a distraction to take the shooter's attention away from Aziraphale.

His eyes, bleary with holy water, had been fixed on the floor as he plummeted. Before he had a chance to even look up, much less get to his feet, a loud, sharp crack rang through the church. A gunshot, its reverb echoing in his jaw, close enough to make him wince in more ways than one.

It was followed, nearly instantaneously thereafter, by a lower-pitched thunk of impact and the pebbly, crumbling noise of many small bits of shattered debris falling to the ground several meters away.

The sound that he had been dreading, the dull, fleshy impact of a bullet hitting a person in the face or chest at point-blank range, did not occur. He dared to look up.

The good thing, the amazing thing, was that Aziraphale appeared to be entirely unhurt, right down to his still-impeccably-tied bow tie. If it were not for the dark droplets of water splattered across the legs of his trousers, Crowley might have suspected him of being a perfect, angelic figment of his too-hopeful imagination. The shock on Aziraphale's face was already rapidly being overtaken by some more complex expression, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly upward.

The gunshot had gone high and wide, the bullet harmlessly embedding itself in a stone column along the far wall.

The bad thing was that the gun had more than one bullet, and it was now pointed directly at Crowley, who was still crouched on the ground, in the middle of a puddle, staring at Aziraphale.

Several things happened in rapid succession. He heard the click of the gun being cocked. The expression on Aziraphale's face hardened into a familiar mixture of fierce determination and stubborn insistence, just before he lunged forward. Crowley flung himself sharply to one side, flattening his body instinctually against the floor. This motion, of necessity, meant that he was not in a position to see what was happening above him.

There was a dull thud, and the sounds of a struggle. Someone screamed in pain and cursed; a male voice. It did not sound like Aziraphale. The report of a gunshot that had seemed like an inevitability never came.

Crowley scrambled to his feet, and, for the second time in under a minute, looked up, half in apprehension, half in hope.

The first thing he saw was Aziraphale, who was looking back at him, whole and unharmed. A flood of clear relief washed across his face, mirroring the flood of Crowley's own emotions nearly perfectly.

Everything else in the tableau before him made no sense. He looked, blinked hard as if the lingering remnants of the holy water in his eyes might have affected his vision, and looked again. The scene did not resolve into anything more comprehensible. It was as if, in a split second, someone had come and subtly rearranged people and objects like pieces on a gigantic chess board, shifting both the balance of power and something fundamental about Crowley's own understanding of how the world was supposed to work.

Somehow, the man with the gun was now standing several paces back from his original position, staggering slightly, as though he'd been shoved back forcefully against his will. His face was contorted in a grimace of pain, and his right index finger appeared to be bent at an unnatural angle. It was, Crowley noted, his trigger finger, and was quite clearly broken. He would not be using it to fire his gun anytime soon, although perhaps that was a moot point, as the weapon in question was no longer in his possession at all.

It was instead, inexplicably, now in Aziraphale's hands. This was the utterly incomprehensible thing that had caused Crowley, who'd seen far more than his fair share of strange things in his strange life, to do a double-take.

Aziraphale's grip was steady. He handled the weapon far less gingerly than Crowley would have expected. It was pointed toward the ground, and his finger was nowhere near the trigger. Even still, the sight of Aziraphale holding a gun was incongruous and more than a little disconcerting.

Something of Crowley's consternation must have shown on his face, because Aziraphale looked away, saying defensively, "Well, in the right hands, they do lend weight to moral arguments," before ejecting the cartridge, which fell to the ground with a clatter, and flinging the unloaded weapon away in disgust. It fell among the pews with a low clunk. It was second nature by now to Crowley to catalog and locate the source of novel, potentially dangerous vibrations and sounds; thus, he knew that it had landed nearly halfway down the length of the building, well out of reach of anyone at the altar. Aziraphale apparently had quite the arm on him.

The erstwhile gunman had a fearful, panicky glint in his eye that Crowley recognized. It was the look some people got when they saw his eyes, when they realized that the person they were fighting was not exactly human. That was not a common reaction these days though; the Serpent was too well-known in the city by now for most people to be shocked by snake eyes in a human face. Still, he wasn’t one to question this stroke of good fortune. Maybe the man was new in town. Maybe he didn't read the news or listen to gossip. Maybe he was one of those who believed the Serpent was a demon. Whatever the case, he turned tail and ran, fleeing through a door in the back corner behind the lectern.

Crowley let him go. He had to, because there were still two other people present who were a danger to Aziraphale, and one of them, the man whom Zuigiber had called Glozier, had stepped forward, grabbing Aziraphale roughly by the front of his shirt and attempting to drag him away.

Carmine Zuigiber held out a hand and said imperiously, "Wait."

Glozier stopped immediately, although he did not let go of Aziraphale, and cast a fearful look in Zuigiber's direction. 

She did not even bother to spare him a glance. Instead, she was staring intently at Crowley, an expression of smug, predatory satisfaction spreading across her face. 

" _You_. You again." Her gaze flicked for a moment toward Aziraphale, and then back to Crowley's face. It was avid and rapacious, calculating and disconcerting. "We were saving you for last, but this is too good an opportunity to miss."

All he could see of her face were her eyes, which seemed to be oddly unblinking, and the red slash of her mouth, curved into a vicious, gloating grin. Her heat signature had, strangely, somehow grown even redder and brighter. By some trick of the candlelight, the flames painted on her mask, blood-red with just the barest hint of gold, looked like they were alive, flickering and hungry.

He swore he could feel the heat of those imagined flames, even though she was several feet away, with the stone altar between them, even though he knew that they were not even real. Still, his face felt hot and a hazy redness was spreading across his vision. His eyes burned with it. If he touched them, he wondered wildly, would his hand come back red and wet with blood?

He tried to concentrate. He'd been attempting to calculate the distance between himself and where Aziraphale stood, his shirt still clutched in Glozier's grip, and trying to decide how best to spring between the two to free Aziraphale.

It was becoming harder and harder to think straight. It felt similar to how it did when strong emotions caused his eyes to go full yellow, the iris spreading from corner to corner and crowding out the white, and his more serpentine traits came unbidden to the fore. The difference was that, now, all of the sensations were magnified many-fold and entirely, wildly, out of his control. The little everyday sounds and vibrations that he'd long ago learned to tune out – the inhales and exhales of the other people in the church, a lone cricket chirping outside, the thudding of his own pulse in his veins – flooded his senses, overwhelming and insistent. A droplet of water trickled slowly down his neck; it had gotten inside his suit somehow and seemed the most irritating thing in the world. The pressure in his skull kept building and building until it was nearly unbearable.

Rage boiled up inside of him. Every inhale was a desperate gulp for cool air that turned into fire in his lungs. He felt like he might explode, like the inferno would consume him from the inside out until he was nothing but a paroxysm of red-hot fury and flame. He bared his teeth, his face a hideous contorted grimace. He tasted blood, hot and metallic, felt a sharp pang inside his cheek where he'd bitten it.

He needed to hit someone. Anyone. Whoever was closest.

The person closest to him was Aziraphale.

Crowley was hissing now, unable to stop, a vehement exhale of breath through gritted teeth. He took one step forward, fists clenched tight at his sides, and then another. Aziraphale was close enough to touch, close enough to bear the brunt of the full, shocking nightmare of Crowley's bared teeth and acid eyes.

And, for all that Crowley knew that he looked like a monster right now, there was no fear or disgust or horror in Aziraphale's eyes. There was only hope and trust and faith, and a flicker of something like fascination, same as there had been at the Armory and again when Crowley had fallen from the ceiling earlier this very night.

Aziraphale could not have said _I believe in you_ any clearer than if he had spoken the words out loud.

Crowley loved him. He would never harm him, not even if it meant his own undoing, not even if all the hounds of Hell were on his heels.

What he felt for Aziraphale was something deep and elemental, that transcended rationality, that was stronger than rage and fury. It was a blade of white light, cutting a sharp, clear line through the choking scarlet fog. It was a thin tether to sanity, to humanity, to the world he loved.

The furious, frenzied wrath was still there though, pushing back against the thread of clarity, threatening to boil over, to explode, to overwhelm. It needed an outlet, and the next closest person was Glozier. Before he was even really aware of what his body was doing, Crowley had grabbed him by the shoulders, yanking him away from Aziraphale, and punched him in the face. He put his full weight behind the punch, punctuating it with an abrupt, full-body tense-and-release, a cobra strike. Ordinarily, he almost always pulled his punches, but now he could think of nothing but how satisfying it would be to hit the man as hard as he could. He'd had never been particularly strong, but there was nevertheless enough force behind his blow to bloody Glozier's nose, knock him off his feet, and send him flying backwards, right into the altar. There was a loud, unpleasant crack as his head hit the solid stone.

Behind him, Aziraphale made a small noise of distress. It sounded somehow both very clear and very far away.

Glozier was clearly unconscious and thus fully incapacitated. Fists held up before him, Crowley stalked toward his fallen opponent. The rage, temporarily released but now rapidly building back up again, urged him to keep fighting, to destroy Glozier for threatening Aziraphale, to break all the bones in his body and then some. The knowledge that Glozier was still breathing, his chest rising and falling in a slow, rhythmic pattern, utterly enraged him.

Just as he reached the altar, the awareness of Aziraphale's presence behind him pulled him back, arrested his hands moments before they could fix themselves around the unconscious man's throat.

He stepped backward with some difficulty, feeling like he was struggling against a strong riptide. He took several deep breaths, dropped his hands to his sides, and forced them to unclench. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

He heard Aziraphale exhale.

Across the altar, Carmine Zuigiber gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth in shock. She looked as though someone had just dropped a bombshell of truly epic proportions.

"That— that's not possible," she whispered, her panicked eyes darting back and forth between Crowley and the unconscious Glozier. "No. How—? How did you beat it?"

She screamed in frustrated rage, and, without warning, swept her hand across the altar, upending the candelabrum. Several of the tall, lit tapers came loose and rolled free, spilling wax everywhere, and the altar cloth caught fire. The large, ornate bible resting atop the altar went up in a tall, vicious whoosh of flame. Nearly simultaneously, the crimson haze seemed to lift all at once from Crowley's vision and the pressure in his skull disappeared with a pop between one moment and the next. The unnatural, hot flush of rage was gone too, replaced by the less complicated, but still urgent, heat of the real, ordinary fire in front of him.

Aziraphale came rushing up to the altar, beating desperately at the flames with his coat, which he had apparently attempted to soak in the remnants of the holy water from the overturned font. Thankfully, the conflagration was mostly self-contained, as the stone altar and floor would not burn, and together they managed to smother the flames before anything else nearby caught on fire. It was smoky, and the things that had been on the altar itself were lost causes, but the rest of the church remained safe and unburnt. This took several frantic minutes, however, and by the time the flames had been completely extinguished, Carmine Zuigiber was gone, leaving behind only the fading roar of a motorcycle engine as it sped away.

Now that the fire had been put out and the last of the smoke was dissipating, an almost reverent calm fell over the church. Crowley imagined that this was what churches in the middle of the night ought to feel like: hushed and slow, maybe just a little bit eerie. He suddenly felt very tired, the adrenaline of the fight and fire draining away all at once. He laid his right hand against the blackened altar and leaned heavily into it.

To his right, Aziraphale dropped the sooty remains of his coat on the altar and exhaled, coughing slightly.

"Sorry about your coat," murmured Crowley. "If I could snap my fingers and fix it, I would."

"It's all right. It's only a coat. I can replace it. It's not important, not compared to other things. Are you all right, dear? You didn't seem quite yourself there for a bit."

He reached out and laid his hand atop Crowley's, there on the charred stone of the altar. His skin and his perfectly manicured nails were very pale against the slick night-black of the Serpent's glove. The band of the heavy gold signet ring on his pinky pressed into the top of Crowley's knuckle, and his hand was warm, even through the fabric of the gloves, and comfortably weighty. Crowley's exhaustion suddenly fizzled away into nothing, like fog in the morning sun. It wasn't quite adrenaline running hot through his veins this time, though, but something warmer, smoother, richer, something that would linger and sustain.

Crowley flipped his hand around, and then they were palm to palm, fingers intertwining. One of them, or perhaps the two of them together, lifted their joined hands away from the altar so that they could turn to face one another.

"Are you all right?" asked Aziraphale again.

Crowley was not, in fact, entirely all right. He was inwardly cursing his suit, and the fact that almost every inch of his skin was encased in it, because Aziraphale was holding his hand and the damn gloves were in the way.

"Yeah. 'M fine."

"Good," said Aziraphale, squeezing his hand.

"Are you? Fine, I mean. This is the second time I've found you getting yourself in trouble. Habit of yours?"

"Er…"

"That was Carmine Zuigiber, in case you didn't know. She's dangerous, although I hadn't realized until just now exactly _how_ dangerous."

"I know who she is. But she threatened to harm a friend of mine if I didn't come here tonight." 

"This friend… they must be someone important to you."

"He is very … dear… to me, although I'm not sure he knows it, or if he's as fond of me as I am of him. So, you see, I didn't have a choice. I had to come. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything were to happen to him. Surely you have someone like that in your life. Someone for whom you'd risk everything, and count it a small price to pay for their well-being."

"I— Yeah. Yeah, I do," said Crowley softly.

"Then you'll understand why I had to do it. Oh! I suppose I should probably warn him to be careful, shouldn't I?"

"Best that you do. Although I think your friend can probably take care of himself."

"Oh, but you don't know him. He can be frustratingly impulsive, sometimes. And brave. He's never been able to keep from asking questions. It's what makes him a good reporter, but I must admit it causes me no small amount of worry. And he's kind. So terribly, wonderfully kind. If he knew I'd gotten myself in trouble, I've no doubt he'd try to find out who did it."

" _Kind?"_ parroted Crowley incredulously.

"Yes, kind. He doesn't like people to know that, but he has a heart of gold. Like you, I imagine. Always helping those who need it most."

"Just doing m'job," muttered Crowley.

Aziraphale smiled wistfully. "That sounds exactly like something he'd say."

"How'd they find out about him? Or that you had dirt on them, for that matter?" Had Zuigiber and the others been following Aziraphale? Keeping tabs on him? Crowley hadn't noticed anything amiss when they'd been together, but it was true that he was often more distracted than he should be around Aziraphale.

"Do you remember the last time we met? They took my phone then, and I guess they looked through it. I don't use it for much besides making calls and text messages. I'm afraid I'm terribly outdated when it comes to technology; they were probably hoping to find something more incriminating, but I don't keep anything sensitive on it, no bank accounts or anything, not even the drafts of my articles… but he _is_ the person I call the most, by a large margin, I daresay. And we do spend a lot of time together, especially of late. I don't think it's too hard to figure out that I— that he's important to me.

And also, I think they may have caught me snooping around their headquarters one afternoon, trying to gather information. It was silly of me, really. I'd just thought how nice it would be if I could surprise Crowley with some new information for our investigation. He's always discovering new secrets and uncovering hidden threads, and I just… well, I suppose I wanted to impress him a little. It's silly of me, I know. But it turns out I'm rather rubbish at that sort of thing anyway." Aziraphale sighed with resignation, and added, "He's much better at it than I am."

Aziraphale had never been good at blending in, with his bow ties and his cravats and his fussy, fastidious manners, something which both frustrated and charmed Crowley in equal measure.

"You're very memorable," said the Serpent, "I like that about you."

"Oh," said Aziraphale, sounding abashed, "well, thank you, my dear. That's very kind of you."

"Just the truth. I'm sure your— Crowley thinks so too. But something tells me he wouldn't want you putting yourself in danger for his sake."

"He'd do the same for me. I'm certain of that."

 _I would. I am._ "He sounds like a good friend."

"He is. My best friend. The sort you might only meet once in your lifetime, and count yourself lucky that you have."

"I know the feeling."

"And thank you, my dear."

"For what? Not like I did much except take a swim in some holy water."

"That's poppycock, and you know it."

" _Poppycock?"_

"Yes, poppycock. I'm quite sure I would be in much the same state as that fellow lying on the ground over there, or worse, had it not been for you. And besides, rescuing aside, I am ever so pleased to see you. I've been hoping we'd cross paths again. I keep thinking of you." 

"You do?"

"You're rather memorable yourself, as I'm sure you're aware. How did you know I’d be here tonight, anyway?"

"I ... ah... I hear things," said Crowley vaguely. "Y'know. Through the grapevine. Very useful things, grapevines. Tell you all sorts of things."

"All that, and wine comes from them too," said Aziraphale, with a smile.

Aziraphale had, at some point while they'd been talking, caught hold of his other hand as well, so that they were standing face-to-face, both pairs of hands intertwined. For one strange, surreal moment, he looked as though he had a pair of wings sprouting from his shoulders. These quickly resolved into the appendages of the stone eagle on the lectern some distance behind him, but the image remained: the bright gleam of his hair, the pale, graceful arch of white wings spreading behind him, poised for flight.

Crowley could climb to great heights, and he had fallen more times than he cared to remember, but he'd never known what it was like to fly.

"It's funny, actually," murmured Aziraphale with a small smile. "How is this only the second time we've met, you and I? It feels like we've known each other for years and years."

 _Because we have, Angel._ Crowley did not trust himself to speak, and instead made a noncommittal humming sound.

Aziraphale's eyes skated up his face to meet his, his eyebrows lifting just a tiny bit. Crowley had known Aziraphale for more than nine years, had memorized the shape of his face and all of its microexpressions, and he knew this one immediately, intimately, for the wordless question that it was: _may I, please?_ He felt brave, bolstered by the anonymity of the Serpent's hood and his shadows-and-moonlight existence. Brave enough to nod assent. 

Aziraphale tipped his face forward and pressed soft lips to Crowley's mouth. There was no suit in the way here, only the warm, wet press of their mouths, bare against one another. Aziraphale had an expression on his face that Crowley had never seen before, something as bright and inevitable and unfettered as a sunrise, halfway between wonder and joy. 

The kiss felt like a miracle, soft and sweet and deep. In truth, he did not have much to compare it to; he hadn't kissed anyone, hadn't _wanted_ to kiss anyone who wasn't Aziraphale, for years. It did not matter though, not in the least; it could have been objectively terrible, all awkward bumped noses and clashing teeth, and it would still have been perfect. Aziraphale had kissed him, and he felt giddy and weightless and soaring with the joy of it.

Crowley would have gladly gone on kissing Aziraphale for hours, but his eye caught on something on the ground near their feet, and he was reminded forcefully and unpleasantly of their current precarious situation.

It was Aziraphale's leather satchel, which Glozier had dropped in front of the altar after being accosted by the Serpent. Crowley bent to pick it up and handed it to Aziraphale. A few wispy bits of ash drifted away as he did so. For a moment, they held it together, Aziraphale's hand over his.

"What do you have in here anyway? Feels like a whole bloody library."

"Oh, documents mostly. Evidence against Zuigiber and her colleagues. Goodness, I can't believe I nearly forgot about it. It's almost a miracle, isn't it, that it didn't get all burnt up when the altar caught fire. Crowley would have been so disappointed if I'd left it behind."

"I'm sure he'd understand, given the circumstances."

"Oh he would, he'd be terribly kind about it, as he always is. But I don't like to worry him. He's quite high-strung."

" _High-strung?_ "

"Just between the two of us, I find it rather endearing, but you didn't hear that from me."

 _Oh, Angel_ , thought Crowley. He wondered if Aziraphale had felt the little leap in his pulse just then, where their fingers were still touching over the handle.

"Besides, it's been a bit of a dream of mine for a while now to share a byline with him, and for that to happen, it would really be best if I didn't go about just willy-nilly losing all of our research."

"Uhngk— yes— that would be, ah, quite the setback. Good thing you've got it then."

"We should probably be going, shouldn’t we? Before Zuigiber comes back to finish the job, or this gentleman here wakes up."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right."

Crowley took the opportunity to handcuff the still-unconscious Glozier securely to one of the railings separating the altar from the front rows of pews. The cuffs, custom designed by Tracy, were embossed with his Serpent insignia; the police, after nearly ten years, would undoubtedly recognize it on sight. He was counting on that.

He could see tomorrow's headline already: _Serpent thwarts church desecration!_ , as well as the sensationalistic comments that it would inevitably attract ( _Has the snake of New Eden finally found religion?_ ). For once, though, he welcomed the notoriety, invited it even, because it meant that the gossips would be too distracted by the spectacle that was the Serpent Going to Church to wonder whether there was something more sinister at play here than a simple act of vandalism.

"You'd better take these with you too," he said to Aziraphale, handing him his hat, which had fallen off sometime during the fracas, and the remains of his burnt coat. "Best that they not know you were here at all when someone arrives in the morning to find the place trashed and this fellow looking all kinds of guilty."

"I'm inclined to agree. Although… won't he say something?" 

"Nah. Doubt it. He can't talk about you without mentioning Zuigiber, and I think he's scared to death of her. I saw the look he gave her when she told him to stop. He'll keep quiet."

"What _did_ she do back there? You— you didn't seem like yourself."

"I— I'm not sure exactly, only I felt so _angry_ , and like I wasn't in control of my own actions. Not quite like she was controlling me, exactly, more like my anger was a fire, and she was … stoking the flames somehow. Pouring gasoline on them. I've never felt so … enraged… before. It's— I didn't like it, not one bit."

"It sounds singularly unpleasant. I'm so sorry."

"It was like all I could think about was beating that guy into a bloody pulp. I was so _mad_ that he was hurting you, and the only way to release that tension was to resort to violence. It— it scares me, Aziraphale. How ready I was to— to hurt him. To maim or even kill."

"That wasn't _you._ That was _her._ "

"I honestly didn't think I had that in me, that I was capable of such blind rage. I— I know a lot of people think I'm some kind of monster, and honestly I can even understand that, at least a little bit. I'm _not_ normal. I might even be a freak. I know that. But I'm really _not_ usually violent or bloodthirsty, if you can believe that."

"Of _course_ I know that. I've always known that. Even before we met, everything I knew, everything I'd seen and read, of you told me that you were … noble, I suppose, would be the word for it. I've never had cause to question that. Not once. Not ever. And now that we _have_ met, I can say that you are not just noble, but gentle. Kind. Principled. Thoughtful. People who say otherwise are just ignorant. If they'd just open their eyes and _see_ , they'd all agree with me. I'm certain of it."

Aziraphale's sentiment should not really have been a surprise, given who he was, but even still Crowley was momentarily struck speechless by his statement.

"Thank you," he said eventually.

"You're welcome. But no thanks are necessary. I'm only telling the truth."

"No, I mean… thank you for being here tonight. You're the reason, I don't know how, but you're the reason I stopped, the reason I _didn't_ beat him to a bloody pulp. I think … I think I didn't want you to be disappointed in me."

"I'm glad I was here, then," said Aziraphale, squeezing his hand. "But I don't think I could ever be disappointed in you. And for the record, I think you would have stopped regardless. I don't believe you have it in you to be a murderer, or even just to be cruel, whatever she wants you to do or think."

"Carmine Zuigiber and I… we’re the same, I think," Crowley said thoughtfully. 

"That’s not true! She’s vicious and cruel and bloodthirsty, and you are nothing at all like her. _Nothing._ Do you hear me? I _won’t_ have you saying such things about yourself."

"No, no, no. I didn’t mean it like that. It's just that I think we both have strange powers. I wonder how she got hers.”

“Well, how did you get yours?” 

“Snake bite.” 

It was shockingly easy, like sliding into a warm bath, to tell Aziraphale this secret, small and relatively predictable though it was. It could not, he knew, be any safer, any more protected, any more cherished, in any other hands.

"Well, given that she doesn't seem to have any snake-like traits, that seems unlikely," mused Aziraphale, then added with more levity, "unless she managed to get herself bitten by a particularly angry dragon."

"Or a horse. Those buggers are vindictive enough. Hard on the buttocks too."

"Oh, come now. Horses are quite friendly creatures, so long as you treat them with respect."

"Not to me they aren't. Might be the snake thing, but horses _hate_ me. With a passion. Can't even get close to 'em before they're glaring at me like they want to trample me. With extreme prejudice."

"Well then. I suppose _I_ shall just have to protect _you_ if we encounter any horses tonight," said Aziraphale, laughing.

He bent over and righted the holy water font that Crowley had knocked over. It looked like it was constructed of heavy stone, and had certainly felt that way when his foot had connected with it as he fell, but Aziraphale hefted it back upright easily and with little apparent effort.

As they made their way toward the exit, something occurred to Crowley, and he made a quick detour, ducking into the pews and returning a few moments later with the gun that Aziraphale had tossed aside earlier. His instinctual memory had not failed him, and it was exactly where he had thought it would be, lying underneath a pew a little less than halfway between the altar and the church doors. Aziraphale frowned when he saw it.

"What on earth do you want that awful thing for?"

"It's got your fingerprints on it."

"Oh. I hadn't even thought of that. I did tell you I was bad at this sneaking around business."

"You're fine. I've just been doing this a long time. Besides, you got it away from him in the first place, so you didn't do so shabbily yourself."

"I feel a little bit bad for breaking that man's hand. He must be in a great deal of pain. I do hope he has the sense to go see a doctor and get it set properly."

"Don't feel too bad. He was the one who was trying to kill you in the first place."

"Oh, I know. I don't regret it. Some things are necessary, however distasteful. He'd have shot you if I hadn't taken his gun away, and that doesn't bear thinking about."

"How exactly _did_ you manage to break his hand anyway?"

"Ah… just— just luck, I suppose."

"I wish you wouldn't throw yourself in danger's way for me. He had a _gun."_

"You'd do— you _did_ the same for me."

Aziraphale had been the one who'd needed rescuing, ostensibly. And yet he'd ended up rescuing the Serpent just as much as the Serpent had rescued him.

On the threshold of the church, by mutual, unspoken agreement, they turned to each other, sharing one more kiss for the road, sweet and slow and unhurried.

Crowley's Bentley was parked a block away at the end of a quiet, dead-end street, but instead of heading that way and risking Aziraphale catching a glimpse of the familiar vehicle, he shimmied up the side of the three-story building on the far side of the parking lot. He'd double back for the Bentley once Aziraphale was safely out of the area. He hauled himself up over the eaves and turned back, looking down at the parking lot, which was empty save for one car and one person. Aziraphale was clutching his coat and hat to his chest and looking up in Crowley's direction, light flooding his face and illuminating the soft half-smile there.

He wondered what he looked like to Aziraphale, clad in liquid black, nothing of himself visible save for a pair of inhuman eyes and perhaps the pale suggestion of a face. The light did not reach to the rooftop of the building where he stood. He was three stories up, wreathed in darkness, and there was no way that Aziraphale could see the expression on his face, so The Serpent smiled the smile that Anthony Crowley saved for Aziraphale Fell, waved, and melted into the shadows.


	10. A house of cards

The newsroom was abuzz the following morning with talk of the Serpent's overnight escapade. Glozier had indeed been arrested by the police. He'd also stayed resolutely quiet, refusing to answer any questions about what had actually happened at the church the night before. There was no mention of either Carmine Zuigiber or Aziraphale.

This was, of course, all fine and good, and exactly what Crowley had predicted, confidently, to Aziraphale the night before. Still, he'd been half-convinced that he'd walk into the office that morning to see a headline proclaiming " _Serpent in Love!"_ splashed in massive font across the front page of the morning edition. He'd kissed Aziraphale in front of a bloody church altar last night, and it had seemed the kind of earth-shattering event, a decade in the making, that warranted a full-page headline and perhaps a dramatically-lit still frame of the moment itself. It had been both the bravest and the easiest thing he'd ever done.

The giddy, ridiculous thought occurred to him that there had even been two seasoned reporters on the scene last night, one of them undercover. He imagined telling Aziraphale this, in a world where there were no secrets, where the truth of what he was had been out in the open from the moment they met. Aziraphale would surely shake his head in exasperation, and touch his hand perhaps, fondly and casually, because that would be a thing they could do now.

But of course they didn't live in a surreal fantasy world. In the real world, the person whom Aziraphale had kissed last night and the person he was going to dinner with tonight were, as far as Aziraphale knew, two entirely different people, rather than a single person with two entirely separate, irreconcilable lives.

The actual headline read, " _Serpent saves church, police apprehend man for vandalism and attempted arson_." The article was accompanied by Glozier's mug shot and an exterior shot of the church. Unsurprisingly, a whole crop of various less sedate and more discursive postings had already proliferated online, with titles like _Our Snake and Savior._ Some of the theories were so far-fetched as to be laughable, in particular the one suggesting that they search local hospitals for people with foot injuries, since the consecrated ground of the church would have no doubt "burnt that demon snake's soles to an unholy crisp."

As entertaining as the discourse was, he found himself distracted, constantly looking over at the other side of the newsroom. At Aziraphale, who by the looks of it was just as distracted, gazing down at the fresh-off-the-presses headline with a dreamy half-smile on his face. Not fifteen minutes later, though, Aziraphale was staring blankly at the air in front of him, perhaps too deliberately, with the beginnings of a worried crease forming between his eyes. Crowley's own elation dimmed in response, a small, gnawing anxiety beginning to grow in his stomach.

Eventually, too fidgety to sit still or concentrate on his work, Crowley got up from his desk, fetched a coffee from the break room, and took it to a small, unoccupied conference room down the hall, making sure to catch Aziraphale's eye on the way.

Aziraphale took the hint and let himself into the room a few moments later. He looked fretful and concerned, with that deep furrow still carved into the space between his eyebrows.

Crowley scratched nervously at his neck. Some of the spilled holy water from the previous night had gotten under the hood of his suit and become trapped between the clingy fabric and the sensitive skin of his neck. Although he'd been too preoccupied with other things at the time to notice, it had apparently chafed enough that he'd broken out into an irritating red rash. It was, rather ironically, scaly. And infernally itchy.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Just… I think I must've gotten something on my neck that I'm apparently allergic to." _Holy water. Half-truths. Keeping secrets from you._

"Oh, that does look quite uncomfortable. You poor thing," said Aziraphale sympathetically, leaning in close to peer at his neck. Crowley was nearly overcome by the urge to lean in himself and capture Aziraphale's lips in a kiss. Instead, he swallowed hard and hoped Aziraphale had not noticed him staring at his mouth.

"Eh. I'll live."

"Here, this might help." Aziraphale extracted a small plastic jar from his pocket and unscrewed the lid to reveal some sort of white cream. The pleasant, citrusy smell of it was immediately, achingly familiar. It was the smell of Aziraphale's hands, and sometimes lingered lightly, nearly imperceptibly, on things he touched.

Crowley dipped a finger into the jar and rubbed the cream into his neck; it was cool and soothing against the irritated skin. He closed his eyes and allowed himself a brief, momentary fantasy that it was Aziraphale's fingers, rather than his own, massaging the lotion in circles into his skin.

"Thanks, Angel," he murmured. "That does help."

"Crowley—" started Aziraphale, haltingly. He reached out and gathered both of Crowley's hands between his own. "Crowley. Would you please do something for me?"

"Of course, Angel. Anything," he blurted out. He could not deny Aziraphale anything, not right then, not with his plump, warm hands curved around his own, not with the way Aziraphale was running his fingertips gently across the hills and valleys of Crowley's knuckles. There were no gloves in the way this time. 

They'd shaken hands before, of course; it was the polite thing to do when people were introduced to each other, when they made Arrangements. Shaking hands was nothing like this, though, his hands cradled entirely within Aziraphale's two large, strong ones. 

"Would you try not to go out by yourself late at night?"

"What? Why? I can take care of myself. Why the sudden concern?"

"I just— I worry about you, that's all. I hear things, sometimes. Through the grapevine, you know. Just be careful, all right? Please. I'd very much hate it if anything were to happen to you."

Crowley wasn't thinking about arrangements, or prudence, or nerves, or even about keeping secrets. He wasn't thinking about danger. He was thinking about how Aziraphale's mouth had felt on his last night, how warm and sweet and perfect that kiss had been, and how he would give just about anything for another one. 

"I guess you'll have to walk me home, then, after our date tonight. Make sure I'm not alone."

He had a moment to realize that he'd said _date_ , before he caught sight of Aziraphale's widened eyes, the look of surprise on his face. And then Crowley leaned in, giving in to impulse and temptation, closing the distance between them. Just as he was near enough to feel Aziraphale's unsteady breaths against his face, he felt a hand against his chest, pushing him gently away. 

"I'm sorry, Crowley," whispered Aziraphale, in a strangled, cracked voice. "I can't. I'm— I've— Oh, I don't know how to tell you this, except badly. I kissed someone else last night, and I'm not the sort of person who can kiss two different people on two consecutive nights. Not like this. You— you both mean too much to me. And I think it's probably best if we cancel our dinner plans tonight. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Aziraphale's hand was trembling. It was also still pressed against Crowley's chest, warm through the thin fabric of his shirt.

He sounded heartbroken. Crowley's own heart was breaking in turn at the thought that he'd caused Aziraphale such distress. He couldn't bear it, and so he fled, turning on his heel and blindly stumbling out of the room, hoping that his abrupt about-face had been quick enough to prevent Aziraphale from seeing the tears that had started dripping past his sunglasses and down his cheeks.

He could still smell Aziraphale's moisturizer on his neck; he kept telling himself that he should go and wash it away, that he should stop torturing himself with it, but could not bring himself to actually do so. It followed him through the mechanical motions of the day, like a ghost or a memory, and back home, where he could not find the motivation required to put on his suit and go out, alone as always, into the night. Instead he lay face down on his pillow and tried, unsuccessfully, to think of nothing at all.

In the morning, the smell had faded away into the empty air, but the hollow ache in his chest had not vanished along with it. Instead, sometime during the sleepless night, it had been joined by the hot, acid bite of envy.

It was _entirely_ possible, apparently, to be utterly and completely jealous of oneself.

The Serpent had kissed Aziraphale, and it had been wonderful, better than anything he'd ever imagined. Anthony J. Crowley had never kissed Aziraphale, and it didn't seem as if he'd ever get the chance to do so.

It was suddenly, painfully, clear to him that, for all the nearly ten years he'd known Aziraphale, he had been too paralyzed by the dead weight of his secrets to do anything but move at the slowest, most glacial crawl toward a halfway sort of incomplete happiness that was all he could ever have. And now it was too late. Someone had beat him there, had lapped him entirely, while he hadn't been looking.

That someone being _himself_.

It would have been ridiculous had it not been so tragic. Somehow, he'd ended up in a love triangle with himself. And Aziraphale was apparently too much of a gentleman to two-time his erstwhile superhero _whatever-he-was_ with plain old Crowley. What did the Serpent have, anyway, that Anthony Crowley did not?

Maybe it was the skintight latex suit.

* * *

Crowley stood perched on the edge of the roof of the building across from Aziraphale's, watching the thin, misty curls of his own breath coalescing in the cold night air. It had been nearly a week since Aziraphale had turned him down and canceled their dinner, and the two had not been closer than the distance between their respective desks along the opposite sides of the newsroom. The space seemed vast and unnavigable, a great gulf of silence and hastily broken eye contact.

He missed Aziraphale. He yearned for another kiss, yes, but more than that he missed their long conversations about everything and nothing, missed the way Aziraphale would give him knowing, sidelong glances, missed their good-natured bickering. He missed his best friend.

The rejection still stung, still sat like a heavy, cold lump in his chest alongside the sharp pangs of want and an aching, hollow loneliness. He had to constantly remind himself that it was pointless to be jealous of himself, especially when there was no way, short of revealing everything, to resolve the issue.

What did Aziraphale want? To be just friends with Crowley and more-than-friends with the Serpent? If that was the case, Crowley would find some way to give it to him. The alternative was unthinkable. Two half-lives, each with their own load of secrets, each with as much of Aziraphale as he was willing to give, was still infinitely preferable to a single life lived alone. He'd make it work, somehow, even if he had to split himself up into even more pieces to do so. He was good at compartmentalizing; he had to be.

What was one more card to a whole house of them?

He peeled off one glove. It was tempting, so tempting, to go without, to forego that thinnest of barriers, to feel Aziraphale's skin against his. His hand looked pale and vulnerable in contrast to the dark suit and the dark sky. The nails on two of the fingers were chewed down to the quick, the cuticles worried until they'd nearly bled; biting his nails was a nervous habit that he'd kicked years before, but had apparently picked up again in the past week. He'd broken most of the fingers at least once; the tip of his right ring finger had healed quickly as always but a little wrong several years ago, and was now very slightly bent to one side. Tendons and bones formed graceful, long lines that were starkly visible underneath thin, moonlit skin. The callouses on his palms and fingertips, testament to a decade spent clinging onto and scaling rough surfaces, were decidedly less graceful, but he liked them. They were armor; they kept him from bleeding.

Crowley stared at his hand, at the odd, pale intimacy of it against the dark, monochrome backdrop of sky and slate, for a moment longer, and then replaced his glove with a sigh. Best not to risk it. If he could recognize Aziraphale's hands by the way they dimpled where thumb met palm, by the small, soft divot where his ring had pressed into the neighboring finger for years and years, by the precisely manicured cuticles, it was not inconceivable that Aziraphale would be able to do the same, would notice the bony whorl of his knuckles, the long fingers with their callouses and blunt-bitten nails, the sparse dusting of red hair near the wrist. Had Aziraphale ever taken note of the way the fine webwork of veins under the skin sometimes seemed startlingly green-blue under bright light, the way his pulse sometimes twitched, minutely, in the v-shaped cleft between his second and third metacarpals? The blood that flowed through them was mostly human, red and warm as anyone's, but not entirely. It would not do, it _could never do_ , for Crowley to forget that.

He looked across the way and down, at the exterior of Aziraphale's flat. Warm yellow light spilled from the windows. The Serpent, he thought, would shimmy up that drainpipe there, slither laterally across the wall to the large casement window that had been left open a crack for air, and perch on the narrow concrete ledge. He'd peek in, assess the situation; it was always wise to check before one went barreling in. Perhaps Aziraphale would be there, ensconced in an overstuffed armchair with a book and a cup of cocoa, wearing the small, round, wire-rimmed reading glasses that Crowley secretly adored. He'd look up and their eyes would meet. The Serpent would respond with a suave quirk of the mouth, a confident wink, an insouciant wave of one hand, and Aziraphale would beckon him in with a smile...

A normal, well-adjusted human being, such as Anthony J. Crowley supposedly was, would walk up the half-flight of stairs from the street to the front door and ring the doorbell.

The Serpent rang the doorbell. Aziraphale opened the door a few moments later.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, in a voice of pleased surprise, his mouth already crooking up into the familiar, sweet smile that Crowley had longed to see for days. "Hello."

"Hi," mumbled Crowley, suddenly shy. He looked at the ground. His head was a tumult of expectations and anxieties, all mixed up with desperate hope and fear and love. He hadn't been this close to Aziraphale – close enough to touch, close enough to sense his body heat instead of just the glow of his heat signature – for nearly a week. It felt like walking into bright sunlight after hours in the dark, a flood of warmth and light so bright it was blinding.

Aziraphale was wearing what appeared to be a housecoat of some sort, in a soft, marled knit fabric the color of oatmeal, over the pale blue button-down shirt and beige trousers he'd worn to work earlier that day, and a pair of beige boiled-wool slippers. His reading glasses were perched on his nose. He was also still wearing his bow tie, as primly and perfectly tied as always, which was both inexplicable and so completely, utterly _Aziraphale_ that it hurt. This was, thought Crowley with a start, the most casual attire he'd ever seen Aziraphale in over the entire past decade of their acquaintance. All of the different shades of beige didn't even _match_. (Never mind that there was no reason at all for so many shades of beige to even _exist_.) On anyone else, he would not have hesitated to call the look frumpy; on Aziraphale, it was utterly charming.

Crowley stood before him, on the threshold, in his shadow-slick suit, hooded, gloved, booted.

"You're here," said Aziraphale, wonderingly. "You're _here._ I'd just been thinking about you. I've been doing that – thinking about you, about us – a great deal lately."

"Can— can I come in?"

"Yes. _Yes."_

In all his years as the Serpent, Crowley had never been invited into someone's home. He'd snuck into abandoned warehouses and chased criminals through the smoky back rooms of sleazy clubs and entered closed-for-the-night establishments to thwart would-be robbers and vandals, but that was different. For all he was protecting those places and the people therein, he was still a trespasser. Moreover, those were not places where people lived and slept, where they wore slippers and housecoats and let their pretenses drop. The Serpent was a creature of the night, of windy rooftops and shadowed alleyways and night-dark streets, not of cozy, lamplit sitting rooms full of too many books and worn, squashy armchairs and an overburdened coat rack by the door. He was a creature of the urban wild, not small domestic comforts. The suit set him apart, marked him as an outsider.

And yet Aziraphale's home felt as familiar and as comforting as the man himself.

The street outside, with its circles of streetlight and pools of shadows, its dark asphalt and doorsteps, the sky stretching endlessly above the rooftops, was a liminal space, contiguous with the night and full of places to hide. Crossing the threshold into Aziraphale's flat, into a lamplit space delimited by four walls and a ceiling and a door that shut out the night, felt inevitable and momentous, as easy and as miraculous as breathing.

So, too, did the sudden press of Aziraphale's body against his, the crush of mouth against mouth, the slide of tongue against tongue. He didn't know which one of them had moved first; it didn't matter. What mattered was Aziraphale's hands running up and down his arms and his sides and his back, Aziraphale's mouth open to his and tasting vaguely of chocolate, Aziraphale's warmth seeping through the clinging fabric of his suit where they were pressed together from chest to thigh.

His suit had been designed, out of necessity, to be both protective and responsive. Which was to say, it had been specifically made of a material that clung like a second, tougher skin without dulling his senses, in particular those of touch and vibration detection. It allowed him to slither up walls and cling to the ceiling without extra fabric getting in the way, and did not impede his ability to recognize by feel the little divots and irregularities that were helpful for gaining traction while climbing. It also meant, however, that now he could feel every gentle stroke of Aziraphale's hand against his back and every single place where Aziraphale's soft, yielding weight, with the warm, bright flare of his body heat, was pressed against his front. Aziraphale's pulse thudded in every one of the places where they were touching: all ten of his fingertips holding tight to Crowley's back and arms, the place where his nose was smushed up against Crowley's cheek, the warm, eager sweep of his tongue against Crowley's mouth. The vibrations from each of these individual points of contact all came together into one needy, accelerating, drumming beat in Crowley's jaw. It resonated with the frequencies of both of their pulses. It was exquisite how much he could feel, and maddening how much he wanted even the thin barrier of the suit to be gone, how much he wanted to feel Aziraphale's fingers and palms caressing his bare back, how much he wanted to let Aziraphale's mouth taste every bit of his skin, not just the small portion that the suit exposed.

There was a rigid, protective cup in the suit, for essential reasons that mostly involved the much-higher-than-normal probability that he'd get kicked in the groin during the course of a typical evening. (The suit _had_ , however, been designed by Tracy, and he wouldn't put it past her to have taken scenarios not unlike the current one into consideration.) It was also, as he was just discovering, rather effective at masking the more obvious signs of arousal while one was wearing a skintight latex suit, although not without consequences; it was definitely beginning to feel uncomfortably tight and slightly pinched. There wasn't much he could do about that though, as removing the suit was obviously and regretfully not on the table.

Aziraphale himself had no such protection, and the evidence of his reciprocal arousal was clear, pressed into the crease between Crowley's thigh and hip. If this was all going toward the foregone conclusion, thought Crowley ruefully, he'd be up late doing laundry once he returned home. It would be worth it.

And then the warm, lovely weight of Aziraphale, the plush softness and the exquisite hardness, against his body lightened. Aziraphale's arms, that had been twined strong and tight around Crowley's back, fell to his sides. Aziraphale's mouth shifted away from his. They were still standing very close together, a mere fraction of an inch apart, but even that was too far away.

"Wait," Aziraphale whispered, his voice shaky and overwhelmed. A flash of hesitation flitting across his face. A hint of that crease between his eyebrows. A ragged inhale. "Wait. Can we— I need— I think we need to slow down for a moment. I'm sorry. It's just that this is all going so _fast_."

Crowley had felt it too, that feeling of plummeting headfirst into this thing that was the two of them, _together._ A swan dive. Free fall. Terminal velocity. The momentum of it had felt inevitable, a natural response to the situation in much the same way that his eyes were surely awash right now with gold and emotion from corner to corner. They'd just _jumped_ , on instinct, without checking to see where they were going. And now that Aziraphale had brought it up, now that he'd forced them to think about it, Crowley suddenly realized that he had no idea how this fall would end. A soft landing, a black hole, hard stone, icy water. Maybe all of the above.

If you looked at it a certain way, the two of them had spent nearly a decade in a state of limbo, circling each other endlessly without any real resolution. It was safe and comfortable and so agonizingly slow that they might not have been moving at all. The number of days they'd spent together had to number in the thousands by now, and still it felt like it would take six thousand years more for any progress to be made.

But if you looked at it a different way, this was all terrifyingly, shockingly, new. Aziraphale and Crowley might have known each other for years, but Aziraphale and the Serpent had met mere weeks ago. This was only the third time Aziraphale had ever even _seen_ the Serpent. And yet here they were, in this wild, uncontrolled tailspin of desire and emotion. Even the Bentley didn't go _that_ fast.

Crowley wanted suddenly, hysterically, to share the absurdity of it all with Aziraphale.

"Yeah," he said. "Of course. Of course we can go slow. As slow as you like."

He laid his cheek, the rare part of his skin that was not covered by the suit, against Aziraphale's chest, and Aziraphale did not move away. His housecoat was as soft as it looked, and gently warm with his body heat; it smelled like him, with the addition of a slight hint of cocoa. Crowley could feel the dip and rise of Aziraphale's chest as he slowly exhaled and then inhaled, the steady thrum of his heartbeat through the layers of fabric.

"Thank you. I suppose you're probably used to going fast, you being you."

"You'd think that, wouldn’t you? But trust me, this is as new to me as it is to you," mumbled Crowley, his voice muffled by the cashmere of Aziraphale's coat.

"This is all very surreal. Like a dream. I don't even know your name. Do you _have_ a name? Besides the Serpent?"

He wondered, for a brief, brilliant moment, what would happen if he just blurted it out. _Crowley_. Or maybe _Anthony._ Or perhaps even, with a bit of a shudder, _Tony._

"You— you wouldn't like it."

"Try me."

"No. You really wouldn't."

"I _would._ "

From the familiar, stubborn set of Aziraphale's jaw, it was clear that he wanted to keep contesting the issue until Crowley gave in.

"I can't tell you anyway. I really can't. It's— it's not that I don't want to. Truly. I'm sorry."

It wasn't the whole truth, but it was a portion of it. Aziraphale seemed to understand.

"It's all right, dear. If you're not comfortable… then you don't have to tell me."

"I'm sorry," said Crowley again.

"I do wish there was some way I could get a hold of you, though. I feel almost silly asking, this sounds so mundane, but … do you have a phone number I could call? I can text if you prefer. Or even an email address?"

Crowley did, of course, have both of those things. He even had several anonymous email addresses for communicating with sources who did not wish it to be known that they were talking to the press, but there was a nonzero chance that Aziraphale would recognize whichever one of them he chose, given how closely they'd worked together on the Four Horse mystery. The thought of getting a Serpent-specific phone _had_ previously occurred to him – an untraceable phone was easy enough to acquire – but until today had held no appeal at all. He hadn’t wanted to be at the beck and call of the police, or of the public. Hadn’t wanted to be beholden. Occasionally, he did need to contact the authorities, such as when he'd left a criminal tied up somewhere awaiting arrest, but this was easily enough done by leaving an anonymous tip on the police department's website or asking Tracy to tip off one of her discreet contacts.

This particular scenario - Aziraphale asking for the Serpent's number - had never once occurred to him. But now that it had, he couldn't stop thinking about it, about what such a call might presage. A booty call? A cup of tea and a chat?

(He refused to entertain the thought of Aziraphale in any more life-threatening situations.)

Tracy had offered, more than once, to set him up with untraceable communications devices, for himself or for anyone he wished to be able to contact him. Something as simple as a pager, or any one of a series of more dramatic options. He'd always turned her down, a decision he was regretting greatly at the moment. If only he'd had the forethought… he could have been presenting Aziraphale right now with a signal beacon that would project his serpent insignia into the night sky, like a spotlight wandering over the sleeping city. _Come to me. I need you._

"Sorry. I don't. Always a mystery, me."

"Oh," said Aziraphale, disappointed.

Then he brightened, and reached toward his neck, pulling on one end of his bow tie so that it came undone and slithered smoothly out from under his collar. He walked over to the window and reached up to loop it over the curtain rod.

"What if I hung this here in the window, as a sort of signal, whenever I want to talk to you? I think this is probably the best window; it has the clearest view to the street."

As a means of communication, a bow tie in the window was low-tech and not very efficient and possibly even a little silly. It was also utterly, ridiculously adorable, and far better than nothing, which was what Crowley had offered. He wondered if Aziraphale was aware of the implication, the similarity to the time-honored college dormitory tradition of leaving an undone tie looped around one's doorknob.

"I'll check every evening," he promised.

"Do you know," Aziraphale said, a little ruefully, "the thought had crossed my mind to go out and look for trouble, you might say. I didn't know how else to get in touch with you, and, well, I missed you."

" _No!_ Don’t! You are _not_ allowed to get yourself in trouble, you hear me? Not— not that I have the right to tell you what to do, of course not, I'd never do that, but please please _please_ don’t, I'm _begging_ you."

The wobbly, frantic note of panic in Crowley's voice must have been clear, because Aziraphale smiled, and drew closer, laying his head over the symbol on his chest.

"Don't worry, darling," he said softly. "I was joking, mostly. Although I _do_ miss you, you know."

"Missed you too. So much, you have no idea. 'S why I came tonight."

"I find myself so drawn to you, and I must admit I don't quite understand entirely why. I do think we might have more in common than you might think. But it goes beyond that. I've only felt this way about one other person in my life, and well, I gave up hope that he'd reciprocate my feelings a long time ago, and things are… well, they're complicated now. I think I may actually have been wrong about the not reciprocating bit, but there are other things that have come up – things about me – that I don't know how to tell him. I don't know if I ever can.

You know what they say, lightning doesn't strike twice. But then you came along, and, well, it's almost frightening how very much I'm drawn to you. How nearly instant it was. And you might be one of the only people in the world that might understand, about certain things. I don't know that I'm ready to talk about that just yet, but someday maybe.

So you understand how this is all very surprising and very fast for me, and, to be honest, quite confusing too."

Aziraphale's voice trailed off. He'd delivered his entire monologue into Crowley's chest, without looking at his face.

"We can go as slowly as you like, as you need. I promise. If all you want for now is to hold hands and talk, then that's what we'll do."

"I don't think we need to go _that_ slow," said Aziraphale with a small laugh, and looked up, catching his eye before pressing their lips together. "But thank you. For being patient with me."

The kiss was gentle and unhurried, with none of the gasping, breathless urgency of before, and all the sweeter for it. When they broke apart for air, Aziraphale lifted one hand to touch Crowley's face. He stroked his thumb slowly along the high swoop of a cheekbone, barely brushing the tips of his eyelashes, all the way to where it disappeared under the slick material of his hood. He plucked at the edge, where skin gave way to fabric, and looked up at Crowley, a question in his eyes.

"May I?" he asked.

Crowley froze. He was struck both with the overwhelming desire to let Aziraphale peel back his disguise once and for all, and the sudden, irrational fear that to do so would be to drive him away forever. The clash of these two conflicting urges produced a moment of paralysis, which shattered into sheer, blind panic.

It was too much. Every nerve in his body was screaming at him to flee while his defenses were still intact, and the impulse was too strong to ignore. He bolted, leaving a shocked Aziraphale suddenly caressing empty air. The window swung easily outward at his first frantic push, and he leapt onto the sill and flung himself out without looking, catching hold of the frame at the last minute.

Moments later, he was scrambling onto the rooftop. He allowed himself to look down, for one brief, final moment, back toward Aziraphale's flat. Aziraphale's bow tie was still hanging there, waving gently in the breeze where Crowley had left the window open in his haste to escape.

He stood, panting and desperate, atop Aziraphale's building, trying to will the ruin of his wildly-stuttering heart back into his chest. Below, he could hear Aziraphale's voice calling out; he sounded on the verge of tears or hysteria. He willed himself not to turn around, not to cry or scream where Aziraphale could hear him. Instead, he began walking up, mechanically, numbly, toward the apex of the roof, away from where Aziraphale was now leaning out the window and anxiously scanning the street below and the rooftops across the way. His foot slipped on the steep incline, and a loose tile shifted underneath him as he leapt to safety. It came free and went clattering down the slope, and when it struck the metal gutter at the edge with a clang, it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces. He listened to them rain down onto the pavement below like so many cards tumbling down all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for leaving poor Crowley in such dire straits. But I promise things will start to get better for them soon, and there will be a happy ending. 
> 
> Also, the chapter count went up again... It's possible it'll actually be 14, depending on where I decide to place the chapter breaks.


	11. No time for codes and clues

The fact that he had powers, Crowley had decided long ago, was neither a blessing nor a curse; his life would in many ways be simpler without them, but they'd also given him a sense of purpose when he'd needed it most. If he'd never acquired them, he wouldn't be in this impossible situation with Aziraphale right now. For all he knew, they'd be together, and it would be easy and uncomplicated. But he didn't _want_ to wish away his abilities even if he could, didn't want to give up an essential part of who he was in order to have an ordinary, happy, boring life. He wanted it all. And that was the rub, wasn't it? He wanted everything, the Serpent and Aziraphale and all the other complicated, messy, beautiful things in his life, and his stupid, hopeful heart still occasionally thought he could have it, despite all evidence to the contrary.

At the moment though, this optimism was being beaten down rather severely. He was not having any success at all on the Aziraphale front, despite being determined to fix things between them. What _fixing things_ might entail, he wasn't even certain, but by any metric both Anthony Crowley and the Serpent were failing miserably. (Having superhuman powers, it was manifestly clear, did not confer any sort of advantage in this particular situation.) Whereas Crowley had gone too fast, the Serpent had been nearly paralyzed by fear, and now he was terrified that Aziraphale had decided to wash his hands of both of them. Crowley couldn't blame him, not really. Aziraphale deserved someone who didn’t keep secrets from him. Crowley had thought he could get away with it, with keeping Anthony Crowley and the Serpent separate, but it turned out that two half-measures of truth came along with two full measures of secrets, and everything had (predictably, in retrospect) blown up in his face.

During the day, Crowley thought about calling Aziraphale, writing to him, or cornering him in the break room at work, but he had no idea what he'd say. _I'm sorry I tried to kiss you, Angel. If you give me another chance, I promise I'll be satisfied with what we had before_. (But that was a lie, and he did not wish to lie to Aziraphale, not anymore.) Instead, he avoided him at the office, pretending to be studious and busy and finding sudden, urgent things to do elsewhere in the building whenever Aziraphale's proximity, which he both yearned for and dreaded, grew unbearable. His love for Aziraphale was like a bullet he couldn't remove without bleeding to death; the best he could do was lock it up behind double-thick walls of thorns and hope the scar tissue would grow over it eventually.

At night, the Serpent thought about dropping round Aziraphale's flat for a visit. His patrols occasionally brought him into the vicinity of Aziraphale's street, and even if he could not help checking for a bow tie in the window, he always remained at the safe remove of the rooftops. He did not move into the light where he could be seen, nor did he descend to knock on Aziraphale's door. He was certain that Aziraphale would want an explanation for why he'd panicked and fled before, and he did not have an excuse. He only had the truth, which was not safe to reveal.

In the absence of anything better to do, and in a largely futile attempt to distract himself, Crowley began once more to investigate the activities of Carmine Zuigiber and her colleagues. In particular, he'd been struck by the apparently incidental deaths that seemed to happen in their vicinity with suspicious regularity. Frannie Williams, the woman who'd died in the restroom of Sable's restaurant, was the most obvious of these, but there were also the former policeman-turned-mercenary who'd been killed in the foreign civil war that Zuigiber had been reporting and the two firefighters who'd died of toxic exposure in the wake of the spill at Le Blanc Chemicals. Now that he'd met Zuigiber and gotten a firsthand taste of what she could do, his sense that something was amiss was growing stronger by the moment.

The name of one of the deceased firefighters had stuck in Crowley's mind; he was sure he'd seen it somewhere before. He'd forgotten about it for the most part, in the excitement and despair of the past few days, but now that he had nothing better to do, he figured he might as well satisfy his curiosity.

After some digging in his old files, he struck gold with an article written ten years ago by Gabriel, who had at the time been the star field reporter for the _New Eden Observer_. It was about the warehouse explosion. The very same scene where Crowley had been bitten. Gabriel had interviewed the firefighter, who'd been one of the first on the scene of the accident.

Some additional investigation revealed that the second firefighter, as well as the former police officer who'd been killed by friendly fire in the civil war, had also been on duty the night of the explosion. He couldn't find any information pertaining to Frannie Williams' whereabouts that night, but she'd been a paramedic, so it was not so farfetched to think that she might have been there as well.

This was seeming less and less like a coincidence, all of it. The deaths, the victims' presence at the warehouse explosion, their links to the members of Four Horse. Given what Crowley had personally experienced of Zuigiber's powers, _friendly fire_ would be easy enough for her to pull off, especially in a war zone. It was frankly terrifying to think about the combination of her particular brand of rage with heavy artillery and automatic weapons.

Crowley remembered what she'd said to him that night at the church: _We were saving you for last._ Frannie Williams appeared to have been developing some sort of strange, empathetic abilities right before her death. Perhaps the other victims had shown evidence of nascent powers as well, and that was the reason why they had been targeted and killed.

Although he hadn't seen them in action, it was seeming more and more likely that Carmine Zuigiber's three compatriots, Sable, Chalke, and Azrael, had some sort of abilities too, powers that they could use for any number of increasingly unsavory purposes, up to and including cold-blooded murder.

For all his cynical insistence that he didn't want to be viewed as _good,_ because the idea of _good_ seemed most of the time to be more of a performative thing than a moral one, Crowley had used his abilities to help people and right wrongs, and he was proud of that. The thought of using them to ruthlessly eliminate others like him was entirely abhorrent to him, and yet that seemed to be exactly what Zuigiber and the others were doing. Even if this wasn't personal, which it very much was at this point, it was clear that they had to be stopped.

The problem was that he couldn't, for the life of him, figure out how Sable and Zuigiber and the others were linked to the original explosion, the one he believed to have been the source of his own abilities. There was no evidence, from either his own memories or from any of the photographs and reports he'd gathered, that anyone matching Zuigiber's, Sable's, or Chalke's descriptions had been at the site. (He still had no idea of Azrael's appearance or occupation; he could have been anyone, anywhere.) And if the explosion _hadn't_ given them their powers, then that opened up a whole world of other, unanswerable questions.

He wished that Aziraphale were by his side to help him tease out the real connections from within a sea of noise and dead ends. He remembered how things had been a mere fortnight ago: the two of them poring over evidence together and bouncing ideas off one another with an easy, comfortable rapport.

That was just wishful thinking though. He'd ruined everything between them, and the best he could hope for now was that Aziraphale did not hate him, much less that he would want to spend hours upon hours in Crowley's company ever again. And besides, the truth was that even if things hadn't been so strange and strained between them, this was always going to be a mystery he'd have to solve on his own. He hadn't told Aziraphale at the time about his suspicions regarding Frannie Williams' powers. It came too close to his own secrets, to a place where the veil over them was paper thin, where all Aziraphale would have to do was lift his hand and brush it away.

* * *

After a long and dismal few days, it was Aziraphale who made the next move with both Crowley and the Serpent. He'd always been the braver of the two of them, despite what Crowley's occasional penchant for gravity-defying stunts might suggest.

On Friday afternoon, he sent Crowley a text message. It was short, terse even: _Dinner @ Petronius? 7 pm tomorrow?_ Nevertheless, to Crowley the implication was clear: the choice of an old favorite restaurant and the bland, carefully casual tone were clearly meant to convey the sense that this was a spur-of-the-moment thing, the sort of _let's grab a bite_ invitation that good friends extended to one another without a second thought. This was a _let's go back to what we were, and let's pretend last week never happened_ overture, one which Crowley gladly accepted, all while shoving his bleeding heart back in with his secrets.

He texted back, in the same calculated, casual tone: _Works for me. See you there._ He typed _Angel_ at the end, on reflex, then deleted it after further consideration, before sending the message.

Later that same evening, the Serpent finally saw the flash of silk that he'd been looking for in Aziraphale's window. The bow tie dangling over the curtain rod was Aziraphale's favorite, a beige and pale grey tartan shot through with red. He'd worn it to work that day; Crowley, despite sternly telling himself he wasn't going to torture himself by staring moodily at Aziraphale all day, had noticed, of course. (In better days, Crowley would have teased Aziraphale, fondly, for the fashion choice, and he would have retorted that tartan was stylish, thank you very much. It was an old, comfortable routine by now, and the quiet absence of it that morning had made Crowley's heart ache with loneliness.) The fabric still bore faint wrinkles where it had been looped and pulled taut by his hands, where it had sat against his collar all day, minutely rising and falling with each inhale and exhale. It would smell like Aziraphale's cologne were the glass of the window not in the way, Crowley thought wistfully, remembering the way Aziraphale's neck had smelled when they had embraced on the other side of this very window, before everything had gone wrong.

There was a note taped to the glass, facing outward, in the upper right-hand corner, high enough that it could only be read by someone perched on the window ledge. From the street it would merely appear to be a small white square. Aziraphale would have had to stand on a chair to put it up.

_Hello, dear. Please forgive me for not contacting you until now. I've had a lot on my mind. I've been racking my brain over and over again trying to figure out what I did to frighten you off the other night, and coming up with nothing. All I can say is I'm sorry. I hope you'll forgive me, whatever I did. I'd like to see you, and I think we should talk. Sunday, at nine? I'll be waiting right here. ~~Aziraphale_

" _I think we should talk_? What's _that_ supposed to mean, Angel?" muttered Crowley to himself. _I'd like to see you_ implied _I miss you,_ but _I think we should talk_ came too close to the ominous _we need to talk_ for comfort, and no good had ever come of the latter.

Aziraphale would undoubtedly ask why he'd run, and Crowley still had no idea at all what response he could possibly give. Even so, the thought of saying no, of not appearing precisely at nine (or, more truthfully, ten minutes early, during which time his anxious pacing would surely wear grooves into Aziraphale's rooftiles), did not cross his mind.

The room behind the window was currently unoccupied, although there were signs of Aziraphale's recent presence. A low lamp was lit on one of the tables beside the sofa. Next to it was a cup of cocoa, still mostly full but with a telltale, slightly scummy sheen on the top, like the drinker had forgotten about it and let it go cold. Brighter light spilled into the doorway from the hallway beyond, indicating that Aziraphale was probably home and elsewhere in the flat. Still, there was nobody at the moment to see Crowley standing beyond the glass like a long, dark shadow trembling with hope and fear. He did not look into the other windows, the ones in the bedroom and the kitchen; it seemed a step too far, an intimacy he had not been granted. Instead, he traced, a little shakily, the shape of his coiled serpent insignia in the thin film of dust on the outside of the window with one gloved finger in silent acknowledgement, and slipped away into the night.

* * *

Petronius was nothing like the French restaurant Aziraphale had chosen for their original, now-cancelled outing (which, Crowley had to keep reminding himself sharply, had never been meant as a date.) It was less posh, more comfortable, less fraught with expectations. It wasn't the sort of restaurant you brought someone to on a first date, when you didn't know them very well yet and were trying your hardest to impress. Instead, it was a place where you brought your closest friend, the one whose likes and dislikes you already knew nearly as well as your own, whom you knew would appreciate the good food, the lack of pretention, and the mildly chaotic atmosphere.

In Aziraphale's opinion, the food at Petronius was some of the best in the city. They'd been here countless times together, had whiled away long and pleasant hours enjoying the aforementioned excellent food and each other's company, in better days.

Now, they met on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, smiling a little stiffly and exchanging stilted greetings as if they hadn't spent the better part of a decade entirely caught up in each other's orbits. Aziraphale looked pale and tired; there were dark circles under his eyes that enhanced their anxious expression. Crowley considered offering a handshake, but decided against it. It seemed both too impersonal and too intimate at the same time; he could not bear the thought of touching Aziraphale's hand only for it to mean next to nothing.

"Aziraphale. How have you been?"

"I've been… all right, I suppose. And you?"

"Getting by." ( _Getting by_ was a stretch, but at least it wasn't the lie that _fine_ or _good_ would have been. He wondered what Aziraphale meant by _all right, I suppose._ )

They entered the restaurant, where they were immediately seated at a table near the front of the bustling, nearly-full dining room, and busied themselves with perusing their menus. Crowley was grateful for the distraction: the printed lists of dishes and prices were a thing to focus on so he wouldn't be tempted to stare at Aziraphale, at his strong hands and his soft mouth and his downcast eyes.

Ordinarily, neither of them would even bother to glance at the menu here, much less read it from cover to cover with fierce concentration. They'd been here often enough that they both already knew which dishes were excellent and which merely good. Aziraphale almost always ordered the same thing anyway: a half dozen oysters and the pinot grigio to start, followed by whatever special the chef had dreamed up that day paired with an appropriate wine, unless the special happened to be aubergines, in which case he'd order the tagliatelle Bolognese instead. More often than not, Crowley would order the Bolognese himself (along with the Roman fried artichoke appetizer, which was his favorite), in part because it was a superlative dish, and in part because it made Aziraphale so obviously, giddily pleased whenever Crowley offered to share it with him.

When their server appeared after what felt like an hour but was probably closer to ten minutes, Aziraphale inquired about the special of the day, which turned out to be a gnocchi alla Romana, and then proceeded to order it, along with the oysters, exactly as Crowley had known he would. He did not consult the menu, which was spread open in front of him, once.

Crowley couldn't help but smile fondly, just a little.

"What?" asked Aziraphale, a bit defensively.

"Nothing. It's just… I knew you'd order that."

"I _am_ rather predictable, I'm afraid," said Aziraphale ruefully, looking down at the table. "Perhaps even boring."

"That's not what I meant at all! You're not boring, you've _never_ been boring," sputtered Crowley, indignant outrage making him forget about the awkwardness between them for a moment. "You know what you like, and you're not ashamed of it. And I— I like that."

Aziraphale's eyes darted up at that, meeting Crowley's for a bare moment before skittering away again, but he said nothing. The tension settled back down between them, heavy and silent.

The server, who had been waiting patiently during this exchange, cleared his throat, startling both of them.

"Right," said Crowley, fumbling for his menu. He suddenly couldn't remember the name of a single dish. "Uhhh… I'll have the whatsit, the artsy— articu— those spiky flower things – artichokes, that's what they are! – to start, and then the Bolognese."

"Very good, sir. I'll just go put in those orders right now," said the server, hastily grabbing Crowley's menu and looking relieved to be able to finally escape. Crowley didn't blame him; the awkward atmosphere between himself and Aziraphale was probably detectable from space.

Once he'd gone, they tried valiantly to make small talk. Crowley had conducted interviews as part of his job for more than half his life; he knew all the tricks of how to draw people out in conversation, how to make them comfortable with simple, easy banter before asking the difficult questions, and yet now he found himself fumbling, tongue-tied, unable to think of even the simplest conversational topic that didn't seem to be headed straight for the twin minefields of secrets and feelings. Aziraphale seemed to fare a bit better, steering the conversation with talk about the books he was reading, the latest restaurant he'd reviewed for the paper, and some silly gossip about their colleagues. Even still, Crowley had known him for long enough to recognize the little lines of tension that remained set around his mouth while he chattered about unimportant things, to hear the brittle, falsely upbeat note in his voice, to catch the moments when he lost the thread of the conversation as though he'd been thinking about something else entirely.

For the first time in years, Aziraphale did not insist that Crowley try one of his oysters. He ate them all himself, quietly, and did not appear to savor them in quite the same, full-bodied, intensely focused, and slightly, if unintentionally, erotic way that he normally did. There was no deep inhale, no flutter of eyelashes, no rapturous sigh as he tipped the oyster into his mouth, no little, satisfied smile at the end. Instead, he appeared distracted all the while, twisting his ring around and around on his finger.

Crowley, for his part, was no better, pushing his food around his plate and methodically worrying his napkin into tiny paper shreds in his lap. He dropped his fork midway through the main course, startling badly enough when it hit the floor with a clang that he knocked his knife off the table as well. Needless to say, he did not ever quite manage to work up the nerve to offer to share his pasta with Aziraphale.

And yet, even with all the tense silences and dropped silverware and unfulfilled longing, Crowley felt an overwhelming sense of relief that only grew stronger as the dinner progressed. Here they were, sitting only two feet apart, closer than they'd been in a week, eating dinner and having a more or less normal, if somewhat stilted, conversation. They'd even managed a few moments of eye contact at a time, skittery and charged though it was. He hadn't felt the urge to flee yet, which was an infinite improvement over the last two times they'd been in such close proximity. Despite the tension, there were flashes and hints of their old rapport, of their old ease with one another. There'd even been a shared smile or two. He could still finish Aziraphale's sentences; they still understood each other, laughed at the same absurdities, seethed over the same injustices. A few days of awkwardness was not enough to shatter the foundations of a friendship built over nearly a decade. There were cracks, some of them deep, that would need to be mended with time and care, but, for the first time in a week, that felt like a thing that might actually be possible.

By the time their dinner dishes had been cleared away and the dessert menus delivered, Crowley had begun to let himself hope that things would only improve from here, that their friendship had not in fact been irrevocably destroyed by his impulsiveness. He'd felt askew and unbalanced, like he was slogging through his days woozy and half-asleep, for the past week, and tonight, awkward though it was, was the first time in days that he'd felt even the slightest bit awake.

"Dessert? The tiramisu here is good."

"Ah… no, thank you. I think I'll pass on dessert today."

Crowley had never, not once in nearly a decade, known Aziraphale to turn down tiramisu.

"You sure?"

"Yes. I’m sure. Crowley— I— I want to apologize. I know I've been dreadful. Distant. Uncaring. I'm sorry. I hope I haven't hurt you too badly. I've been preoccupied and confused. I know that's not an excuse but… I hope you can forgive me."

"You and me both, Angel," murmured Crowley. "I'm sorry too, for icing you out. For sulking."

"You have nothing to be sorry for. I'm the one who's been behaving badly. Crowley— I—"

Aziraphale's voice had grown small and tremulous, and he was wringing his hands together.

"Aziraphale?"

Aziraphale swallowed hard, and spoke haltingly but quickly, as if not to give the words a chance to choke him again.

"I— I think we should— that is, I want… Can we— would you come back to my place with me? Please? Just to talk. I need— I want to talk to you. In private. There are some things I'd like to tell you, things that I can't say here." 

Aziraphale looked up. He was biting his lower lip, and looked anxious and unsure, but there was a tiny spark of hope in his eyes. Crowley smiled at him, a tentative, small thing.

“Yeah,” he said, “of course I’ll come, Angel.”

Aziraphale exhaled, the tension draining visibly out of his face, and smiled back. Whatever was frozen between them began to thaw and crack in earnest, revealing something that felt small and tender and raw and precious.

"That's wonderful," he said, "I'm just going to run to the loo to wash up, and then we can head out. Be back in a jiffy."

Crowley remained at the table and watched him head across the room toward the restrooms, which were off the kitchen corridor behind the bar. He resolutely ignored the constant thrum of heat signatures and vibrations all around him. Restaurants, with their steady stream of diners, constant bustle of activity, and the barely constrained chaos of the kitchen, produced a flurry of sensations that he'd become an expert at tuning out, thanks to his many years of dining out with Aziraphale.

The moment Aziraphale was out of sight behind the bar, Crowley flagged down their server. The least he could do was pay for tonight's meal; Aziraphale would protest, he was certain, and so he wanted it squared away before he returned.

In the past, on their frequent visits here, Aziraphale had always paid for the both of them, saying that he'd have it reimbursed by the paper as a work expense. Crowley had always let him, even though he knew deep down that there was no way Gabriel would let Aziraphale write yet another glowing review of Petronius to go with the two he'd already published within the last five years.

"Can I get you anything else, sir?"

"Just the check, please. Actually, could I just pay it right now? I don't need to see it first. If you could just run this, I'd appreciate it." He held out his credit card, but the man waved it off.

"Oh, your partner's already paid for both of you. Just now, at the bar."

"He's… ah… he's not my partner."

"Oh shit. He's not? I'm so sorry! It's just… the two of you have been here so often together, and you always seemed so close, so I just assumed. We all did, to be honest. It's funny actually, we were a little worried today about you two; you seemed to be a little out of sorts with each other…" The man caught himself, realizing he was rambling. "Anyway. I am _so_ sorry for assuming you were together. It was rotten of me, and I apologize. I really do."

"It's okay," said Crowley faintly, swallowing the heartsick longing that was welling up in his throat. "You didn't know."

"Hey, Tom! Can you come here for a sec?" yelled someone from the host stand at the front of the restaurant. The server, who was apparently named Tom, shouted back, "Yeah! Coming!" and rushed off, calling back to Crowley as he left, "Sorry again about the misunderstanding! I'll let the others know, and it won't happen again."

Tom was back, as it turned out, in less than a minute flat, this time with a small white envelope in his hand.

"Mr. Crowley? You are Mr. Crowley, right?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"I'm so sorry to bother you again, but this was just delivered to the host stand in front. The woman who brought it said it was urgent, and to give it to, quote, 'the anxious-looking gentleman with red hair wearing sunglasses indoors.' I figured it had to be you."

He handed Crowley the letter. _Anthony Crowley_ was written on the front in a loopy, familiar script. The handwriting looked rushed and a little wild, and was smudged, like the writer hadn't had time to let the ink dry properly, but Crowley recognized it. It was from Agnes. His heart began to pound, a sudden, furious tattoo in his throat, as he frantically tore at the envelope.

The message inside was uncharacteristically straightforward, although it did betray hints of Agnes' oddly anachronistic language. Unlike every other message he'd gotten from her, it wasn't coded, not even with the simplest of alphanumeric ciphers; this in itself was cause to make his heart beat faster.

 _This is no time for codes and clues. The horsemen ride. Time grows short. Thy angel is in peril_.

His gaze flicked momentarily to the entrance, but Agnes had, unsurprisingly, already gone. She'd have known, of course, that her message would be successfully delivered, and had no need to wait around.

Adrenaline and apprehension sharpened his senses, made him more acutely aware of his surroundings, including all the background vibrations he'd previously been tuning out. There seemed to be an increased amount of activity coming from the back of the restaurant. The thumps and bumps and pounding, running footsteps were more frenetic and chaotic than the typical, everyday clamor of clanking silverware and banging pots and pans. And now that he was paying attention, he could hear the faint sounds of shouting coming from the direction of the kitchen as well.

It was also the direction Aziraphale had gone. It couldn't be a coincidence.

He looked around, frantically scanning the room. There was no head of white-gold curls, no pale, outdated jacket, in sight. A quick survey of all the heat signatures he could detect revealed only the other diners and restaurant employees that he could see in the front, as well as a dozen or so in the back where all the commotion was coming from. The latter included three that seemed to be running hotter than usual, but there was no sign of Aziraphale's distinct signature anywhere within range.

He wondered for a brief moment if perhaps Aziraphale had simply run, if he'd taken the easy way out and escaped out the employee exit in back, but almost immediately rejected that possibility. No, if either of them was going to panic and flee, it would be Crowley, who had done exactly that just a week ago. It was Crowley who was the coward. Aziraphale was braver than that. Aziraphale would not have made an overture, only to turn tail and run away.

And besides, Agnes' message was clear as day, and she had never steered him wrong. Something had happened to Aziraphale, something terrible and pressing enough that she'd foregone her typical obliquity and caution and come in person to deliver a direct, urgent warning.

Crowley was on his feet and already halfway across the dining room by the time he finished that thought. A moment later, he burst through the swinging doors behind the bar into a scene of utter mayhem.

People were shouting and running back and forth. The air smelled like smoke and melted plastic, with a lingering, unpleasantly sweet, phenolic note to it that made him reflexively raise a hand to cover his mouth and breathe as shallowly as possible. The epicenter of the chaos seemed to be the kitchen itself, where there appeared to have been some kind of small fire, now extinguished; several people, coughing furiously and holding wet towels over their mouths and noses, were frantically using large metal baking sheets to wave the remnants of a cloud of thick black smoke out the open window. A beeping alarm was going off in one of the walk-in freezers; in the commotion, it seemed to be going entirely unnoticed. 

The exterior door at the far end of the corridor was propped open, bringing a draft of cold but welcome fresh air. The doors to both of the restrooms were also open, revealing that they were clearly unoccupied. There was so sign of Aziraphale.

Crowley grabbed the first person who ran by, a frazzled-looking busser.

"What's going on here?"

"Oh, man, you wouldn't _believe_ it. It's always a little nuts here, you know, but I've never seen so much crazy shit going down all at once. There was some kind of, I dunno, gas leak? Not cooking gas, though. Freon, from one of the walk-ins. It just sprung a massive leak out of nowhere all of a sudden. It _reeked_. Then right as we were trying to figure out where the leak was, something caught on fire in the kitchen, only it didn't smell like the normal food burning sort of smoke. Real chemically and nasty. Nobody's copping to it, but now there's what looks like a big ol' mess of melted plastic all over the flattop. A couple people even fainted, what with all the fumes and the freon and the smoke.

"And _then_ to top it all off, just as we'd managed to get the smoke and gas to clear a bit, Sarah and Del decided it was the perfect time to get in a fight. _Don't_ ask me what the fuck they were thinking. Sarah just straight up _decked_ Del, he was minding his own business when she turned around and socked him right in the nose for no reason. And she just kept going, yelling and beating on him. Two of us literally had to pull her off and hold her back."

He gestured toward the kitchen, where Crowley could see a grimacing man slouched against a counter holding a towel to his copiously bleeding nose. In the opposite corner sat a woman, looking bewildered and embarrassed, icing her hand with a bag of frozen peas and pretending not to notice the dirty looks the man was throwing her. The pair of them seemed to be the source of two of the hotter-than-usual heat signatures, although those were already fading back to a more typical intensity. He'd definitely sensed a third though, which was now absent; a sinking, dreadful suspicion was beginning to gnaw at his stomach.

"But then a couple of minutes later, it was like a switch got flipped, and she calmed down all of a sudden. Said she didn't know what had gotten into her. He's still mad, though; I don't blame him, she's got quite the right hook apparently—"

Crowley cut the man off with a sharp gesture, worry making him snappish and impatient. "Listen. I need you to focus. Have you seen a blond man back here? Really blond, bow tie, bit heavyset, posh as anything, lovely smile? I really need to know where he is right away. He said he was just going to the loo."

"Oh yeah, I remember him. I think he was one of the people who fainted actually; the fumes were real bad out here in the hall. I swear it was just oozing out of the walls _._ I think someone took him out back to get some fresh air. They had to drag him; it looked like he was out cold."

"Did you see who it was? It wasn't a woman in red by any chance, was it?"

"Definitely not red. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. They were wearing white. I didn't recognize them, but I guess they might've been one of the chefs. Only they were sorta … dirty looking? Surprised the bosses let 'em work here, to be honest, usually they're really strict about hygiene …"

His voice trailed off as he realized he wasn't talking to anyone any longer.

Crowley was standing in front of the open doorway at the end of the corridor, a look of horror on his face as he stared at something on the floor.

There was a familiar gold pocket watch, its chain broken, lying there, right on the threshold. The lid was flipped open, revealing the initials AZF monogrammed on the inside. Crowley had seen that timepiece countless times. He could visualize perfectly how Aziraphale would pull it from his waistcoat pocket, flip it open, glance at the time, snap it closed, and drop it back into the pocket all in a single, fluid motion, honed from years and years of repetition. It was practically a ritual at this point, and for Aziraphale to fail to complete this sequence of events, once started, was unheard of. The only reason he'd leave his watch open (to say nothing of dropping it on the pavement) would be if he had been interrupted while checking the time. If what the busser had said was correct, he'd fainted in the hallway. The chain looked like it had been pulled apart at a weak link, something that might easily have happened if someone was trying to wrangle an unconscious person of Aziraphale's size through the door while everyone else was distracted by the commotion.

The second hand on the watch completed one full revolution, and then another.

Two minutes gone. Two minutes in which Aziraphale was in danger. Two minutes they didn't have.

Crowley snapped out of his daze. The watch itself wasn't broken, which was something. He'd return it, when this was all over and Aziraphale was back, safe and sound, and they'd get the chain fixed, and everything would be all right. It had to be.

He snatched it up from the pavement and ran outside, into the dark and cold.

He emerged into a narrow alleyway. One end of it led directly to the street, which was bright and busy and bustling with people and cars; it seemed unlikely that whoever had taken Aziraphale would have risked dragging an unconscious person out onto the sidewalk. That left the other side, which opened onto a large, quiet parking lot dotted with vehicles and ringed by several tall buildings. Crowley could see the familiar shape of his Bentley off to one side. When he'd parked it there earlier, he'd been distracted by thoughts of his imminent meeting with Aziraphale, and hadn't bothered to look around and get the lay of the land.

Now, however, what he saw made him feel like his heart had just dropped out of his chest, boring a hole straight through his stomach and splattering on the pavement. On the far end of the lot loomed the rear of a building he'd seen before. In fact, he'd spent a whole evening fruitlessly skulking around it not long ago, hot on Raven Sable's trail. It was the Four Horse headquarters, dark and asleep for the night save for a couple of illuminated windows on the top floor. There were four motorcycles parked near its base. Three of them he'd seen before: the large red one that he knew belonged to Carmine Zuigiber, Sable's sleek black machine, and the dingy-looking white one leaking oil onto the asphalt. The fourth was an average-sized black-and-chrome machine that looked serviceable and utilitarian. Next to its three unique companions, it was remarkable in its ordinariness, its lack of flash or identifying characteristics, but if he'd passed it on the highway or saw it parked on the side of the road, he wouldn't have given it a second glance.

The building and the motorcycles confirmed the suspicion that had been growing ever since he'd found out about the unprovoked fight in the kitchen. Carmine Zuigiber had definitely been present when Aziraphale had been taken, along with at least one of the others, the person in white whom the busser had seen. Aziraphale would have recognized Zuigiber, and she would have expected that, so it made sense that she wouldn't have wanted to alert him to her presence.

He didn't have time to dwell further on the implications of this revelation, however, because his eyes had been drawn to something on the pavement directly outside the back entrance of the building. In the bright half-circle cast by the floodlights over the door, there lay a slumped, still shape that was clearly a body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays! I hope you all enjoyed this lovely cliffhanger I got you.
> 
> In all seriousness though, I want to say thank you to all of you: everyone who's left comments or kudos or who just quietly reads along. Your support means so much to me, and really inspires me to keep writing. Thank you all so much for sticking with me. The end is in sight! This chapter is the beginning of the last major plot arc; there are two more big chapters plus an epilogue to go. (And just fair warning, the next chapter will most likely also end on a cliffhanger...)
> 
> I also wanted to recommend an old favorite superhero AU from a different fandom that was one of the inspirations for me to write my own.
> 
> [Word on the Street](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11669841) by shinealightonme
> 
> Even if you've never heard of the Raven Cycle, I honestly think this fic is worth reading as a standalone story. It's brilliant, as is everything shinealightonme writes. The mix of humor, action, and romance in this fic is incredible, and it really made me realize the possibilities inherent in the genre.


	12. Rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for a brief description of a dead body and a lot of fighting, including someone trying to kill someone else using a rather unpleasant superpower and people getting knocked unconscious. (Disclaimer: we’re operating under superhero universe rules here, where people get knocked out left and right without any permanent consequences. IRL there’s a very real risk of death or brain damage, so please don’t try this at home.)

Crowley sprinted across the parking lot, his heart in his throat. Halfway there, he realized that the body was dressed in a uniform of some sort rather than a familiar waistcoat and bow tie, and had dark hair instead of white. Relief that it wasn't Aziraphale flooded over him in an enormous wave, and then he immediately felt guilty about it, because it was obvious that, whoever the stranger was, he was dead, with no heat signature whatsoever. The uniform indicated that he had been a security guard, as did the gun at his side, still in its holster; he hadn't even had time to pull it before being ambushed. Now that he was standing above the body, Crowley could see that the face looked gaunt and grey, with sunken cheeks and dark circles under the eyes, like the man had been suffering from a chronic wasting illness. Which made no sense, because someone who looked so ill they could probably barely walk would never have been able to work as a security guard. He was reminded, with a sharp, unpleasant jolt of recognition, of the medical examiner's images of Frannie Williams' body. He'd be willing to bet that the unfortunate guard had been in perfectly fine health mere hours ago when he'd reported to work.

And whoever had killed the guard had kidnapped Aziraphale. In all likelihood, they were somewhere inside the building looming above him. It was almost entirely dark; the only visible lights on this side were in a couple of windows on the uppermost floor. The door, which appeared to be a small, lightly-trafficked back entrance, did not open when he gave the handle a tentative nudge. The guard must have come this way to investigate, perhaps having seen or heard something suspicious, such as someone carrying an unconscious body.

The door was equipped with a complicated electronic card reader with a steady red light indicating it was locked. The dead guard did not have a keycard or badge on his person, although there was an empty plastic holder for one hanging from his belt next to a ring of traditional keys. Aziraphale's kidnappers must have taken it, Crowley surmised, and used it to enter the building themselves.

Because the lock did not have a physical keyhole, he'd be unable to pick it with his tongue the way he'd done back at the Armory, and he did not have the necessary knowledge or skill to hack it. That left either going around to the front and hoping that the main lobby entrance was easier to break into, or climbing up. The former seemed like a bad idea – it was on a busy street and the last thing he wanted to do right now was get detained by law enforcement for trying to break into the building. And besides, he was the Serpent. When confronted with this sort of situation, his first instinct was never to use the front door; it was to take the vertical approach, slithering up the exterior and utilizing a convenient window or other opening to enter.

Crowley had worn his snuggest pair of jeans and a very stylish and rather slim-cut blazer out to dinner, because, even though Aziraphale had rebuffed his advances, he could do nothing but don his best for an evening out with him. Now, as he contemplated the vertical expanse of steel, masonry, and glass looming above him, he found himself severely regretting this choice. The range of motion and tactile sensation his civilian clothing allowed was significantly less than that of his suit at the best of times, and that was doubly true for this particular outfit. The building was at least not a skyscraper, but its nine stories were nevertheless daunting. He'd most likely need to get all the way to the top, given that the only visible lights were up in the penthouse and he could detect no heat signatures from the ground, indicating that everyone inside, including Aziraphale, was high up enough to be out of range. Trying to scale a wall of that height with few handholds while wearing trousers that effectively reduced his superhuman reach and flexibility by at least fifty percent would slow him down significantly at best, or set him up for a potentially disastrous fall at worst. He considered, for a brief moment, just shucking off the jeans and jacket entirely, but climbing up the side of the building in nothing but his rather minimal underwear and a flimsy t-shirt was a terrible idea in more ways than one. It wasn't so much the loss of his dignity that gave him pause (to save Aziraphale, he'd gladly give up whatever shreds of dignity he had left), but the loss of the Serpent's anonymity. And if that wasn't a frightening enough thought, the idea of waltzing virtually naked and unprotected into whatever ambush was surely waiting for him upstairs had him quaking in his fashionable, but not very practical, snakeskin shoes. 

Back when he'd first gotten his suit, he'd tried wearing it, sans boots and gloves and with the hood tucked into the collar, underneath his normal clothes, but the experience had never been repeated. All of his civilian trousers were snug enough that layering anything, even the skintight suit, underneath was enough to tip them from slightly restrictive to nearly strangling. The fact that he'd had to button his shirt all the way up to the top, and even don a necktie, to prevent the slick black material from showing at the neckline, did not help. He'd felt like he was being squeezed to death by a hot, sweaty, denim-and-latex boa constrictor. (While he could appreciate the irony of that image, he had very, very much not appreciated the actual experience.) The possibility of wearing looser-fitting trousers had not occurred to him.

Because of that experience, though, he now kept a spare suit in a secret compartment underneath the back bench seat of his Bentley, which was conveniently parked a mere hundred feet away. Making a split second decision, he dashed across the lot, tearing off his jacket as he went and fumbling for his keys. (He'd always been adamant about not sullying the integrity of his precious Bentley with something so mundane and modern as remote-controlled electronic door locks, but perhaps this was a position he'd have to reconsider. Later, after Aziraphale was safe and sound.)

It was not easy, as it turned out, to frantically try to peel off one's jeans and shimmy into a full-body, skintight suit while crouched down low in the backseat of one's vehicle, desperately hoping that nobody would wander into the parking lot at an inopportune moment and get an eyeful of his bare arse through the back windshield. Still, he managed, by some miracle, without any major mishaps, although there was a tense moment or two halfway through the jeans removal process when he feared that he had somehow managed to tangle the narrow, stiff denim tubes into some sort of straitjacket for legs. A sense of impending doom did wonders for one's ability to get dressed in a hurry.

This brief detour to the Bentley immediately proved its worth, as shimmying up the side of the building was a cakewalk in the suit. However, the windows on this particular structure were not meant to ever open and thus were welded securely shut, an impenetrable barrier of metal and thick, shatterproof glass. There would be no chance of finding one that someone had left cracked open for air, or even unscrewing the hinges on the screens and windowpanes to prise them out. If he wanted to get in through a window, he'd have no choice but to break one, which would be difficult and noisy and would likely alert everyone inside to his presence. Finding some other, sneakier means of access would be vastly preferable.

Older buildings like this one generally had large air ducts that opened out somewhere at the top. Scrambling up onto the flat roof and glancing around, he saw that this one was no exception. There were several large, industrial-sized metal air outtakes protruding out of the roof, including a couple whose fans did not appear to be currently active. They were covered with protective screens, but those were easy enough to remove with the small screwdriver from the tool kit hidden in his boot, and then it was just a simple matter of angling his body past the quiescent blades of the fan and dropping down into the duct itself.

He crawled carefully down the duct, thankful for the whirring of the air handlers that would probably disguise most of the noises he made; the occasional louder bumps and clanks that accompanied his progress would with any luck be discounted as the groaning of old pipes or the mundane sounds of an old building shifting and settling.

Crowley hated air ducts and tried to avoid them whenever possible - they were labyrinthine and claustrophobic and noisy, and nobody ever seemed to clean them. The accumulated dust did not play nicely at all with sleek black suits. They fed into every damnable preconception people had about snakes slithering through tubes and tunnels in the dark. (People like the one tabloid reporter that insisted on referring to him as Tube Dude in every article he'd written for the last five years and counting.) At times one had to lie flat on one's stomach and use one's abdominal muscles to propel oneself forward because there wasn't enough room to so much as crawl. This always made Crowley feel rather like an egg, moving slowly, peristaltically, through the digestive system of some enormous snake. Really, it was just too existential to bear, if he thought about it too much.

But Aziraphale was in trouble, and for Aziraphale Crowley would suffer any amount of ductwork, and an infinite number of existential crises.

Inside the maze of ducts, he picked one of the larger, main arteries that seemed to be headed in the approximate direction of the lighted windows he'd seen from outside, avoiding any vertical drops that would take him down to the lower floors. He knew he’d gotten close to his destination when he detected the telltale glow of three heat signatures. One of them was Aziraphale's familiar gold, which meant that he was, to Crowley's immense relief, still alive. One of the others was a bright, flaring red that he recognized, with virtually no surprise but a sinking sensation in his stomach nonetheless, as Carmine Zuigiber's, and the third was low and dull, almost ashen.

He followed the trail around a corner, where there was light shining weakly from a small metal vent set into the bottom of the duct. Cautiously, Crowley approached, peeking between the slats into the room below. It appeared to be a large, fancy executive conference room, with a dark wood table ringed with chairs in the center, tastefully bland paintings on the wall, and several potted ficus trees, probably fake if he was any judge, dotted around the perimeter. Aziraphale was slumped in a chair in the corner furthest away from the door. He was lifting his head groggily, apparently having only just regained consciousness. Crowley watched as he tried to raise a hand to rub at his eyes, only to stop short upon discovering that his wrists were securely tied together with sturdy rope behind the back of the chair. A series of conflicting emotions rushed through Crowley's brain, one after another: relief that Aziraphale appeared unharmed, worry and fear for his continued safety, and burning anger at those who dared touch even a hair on Aziraphale's precious head.

Two of his captors were also in the room, both dressed head to toe in thick, protective motorcycle leathers. Carmine Zuigiber, her scarlet-clad back to him, was standing a little off to one side, wielding a pair of long swords with red leather-wrapped handles, one in each hand. Crowley knew next to nothing about swords, but these looked big. And sharp. And cutty. And far too close to Aziraphale.

Raven Sable was pacing back and forth between Aziraphale and the door, gesticulating with black-gloved hands and saying something in a low, snarling voice. Crowley could not distinguish the individual words, but from the tone and cadence, he thought that Sable was probably taunting Aziraphale. Unlike Zuigiber, he did not appear to have any visible weapons; still, Crowley was not foolish enough to believe that he was not a threat to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale did not say anything in response. He looked positively defiant, despite being tied up and at a clear disadvantage.

Still, all the defiance and determination and beautiful, brave stubbornness in the world couldn't save Aziraphale from a slash of one of those vicious swords or whatever deadly power Sable had used to kill Frannie Williams and the security guard down below. He was only human, after all, and the two who held him captive were not.

Neither, however, was the Serpent.

Crowley's first order of business was getting into the room, hopefully in a way that would not alert Sable and Zuigiber beforehand. The vent through which he was spying on them was a little too small for him to comfortably fit through. He could probably manage it if he had no other choice, but he would have to hold his breath and squeeze torturously, slowly, through that narrow opening, leaving him vulnerable to attacks in the meantime.

At the far end of the duct he was currently crouched within, there was a hint of dim light. This turned out to be a much better access option; when he got closer, he could see that the duct dead-ended in an air intake covered by a metal grate nearly twice the size of the one in the conference room. It opened out into the wall of a windowless emergency stairwell with concrete-and-metal risers, rickety banisters, and exposed pipes crisscrossing the ceiling. A few of the steps were stained with something dark, and the whole thing looked bleak and dusty; much like air ducts, nobody ever bothered to clean emergency stairwells. It was lit by weak, bare bulbs and painted a dull, unpleasant olive-grey color. 

He had cause to be thankful once again that he'd taken the time to change into his suit earlier, as the tools hidden in his boot made short work of the bolts holding the grate in place. He winced as it fell, hitting the stairs below with a noisy metallic crash and then tumbling down to the landing half a floor below with a series of heavy clunks that seemed doubly loud in the empty, echoing stairwell. A few minutes earlier, he'd passed above another heat signature that he hadn't recognized, a bizarre one; it was reasonably bright but appeared somehow oily and swirly, with discrete, unblended streaks of livid reds and sickly yellows, like a polluted sunset or a contaminated flame. It had been located between the conference room and the stairwell; if he had to guess, Crowley would say that it was probably someone who had been left in the hallway as a lookout or guard. It was too much to hope that they hadn't heard the grate falling, but Crowley didn't have any other options, so he eased his body carefully out through the opening. He had just emerged and was still clinging onto the edge, when the door to the hallway crashed open and a slight figure dressed in dingy white leather burst through, accompanied by a few wispy tendrils of what looked like smoke.

As the door slammed behind them, the person looked up, a grin spreading slowly over their face as their eyes settled on Crowley dangling from the vent. In the dim, flickering light, the black of their pupils was stark and strange against foggy, nearly-white irises. A foul, low-hanging cloud began to coalesce in the air, tendrils of smog lifting from the steps and peeling from the walls. The mephitic fog was densest around the person standing on the landing; it was so thick that it looked nearly liquid, like viscous dark tar smeared in swirling patterns across their pale face and white garments. They ran a hand across the wall in a slow, caressing movement, and it came away dripping with something dark and sticky. Crowley had a sharp, sudden flashback of the busser at the restaurant saying in disbelief, _I swear it was just oozing out of the walls_.

It grew hazy and hard to see; the cloud was the same sickly brown-grey-green color as the walls and smelled strongly of paint fumes and sewer gas mixed with something hot, caustic, and metallic. Crowley's eyes burned and began to water; an oily, bitter, acidic film coated the inside of his nose and throat, making him cough and gag. He felt dizzy, lightheaded, and vaguely nauseous. On instinct, he scrambled upward on the wall, toward the ceiling. There was some relief there, above the level of the choking, eye-watering fumes, which were heavy enough that they did not rise much above the height of the person who seemed to be controlling them. He gulped down a few deep breaths of the comparatively fresh air, until he no longer felt like he was going to faint or vomit, and then squeezed his eyes shut and dropped back down into the miasma to fight his opponent.

There was a disturbing density to the malodorous cloud, and it remained just as noxious as it had been before. Still, it was not so bad, he found, if he breathed shallowly, kept his eyes shut, and leapt back up onto the ceiling every few breaths to mitigate the disorienting effects of the fumes. His vibration sense, luckily, did not seem to be impaired at all, so he was able to fight vision-less but not blind, locating his opponent by a combination of sound and vibration, striking out with his hands and feet with his typical serpentine speed. They fought back, with flailing fists and splatters of some kind of foul-smelling liquid. A drop of it splashed on Crowley's face, and he hissed in pain as it burned on contact. He was glad that his eyes had been closed. His suit took the brunt of the assault; the liquid sizzled as it hit the fabric but did not cause significant damage. When Tracy had designed it, she had sourced, with some difficulty, a proprietary, top-secret material engineered to be highly resistant to acids and various other unpleasant substances. Crowley hadn't really seen the point at the time, but she'd insisted and said he'd thank her one day. That day was now, and Tracy had, as always, been one hundred percent right.

Eventually, after several rounds of scuffling punctuated by periodic strategic retreats to the ceiling, Crowley managed, through a combination of reflexes and luck, to swing himself down from an exposed pipe on the ceiling and land a direct hit with both feet to the upper part of his opponent's chest. The momentum flipped his enemy over the banister and down into the open center of the stairwell. They let out a howl of frustration as they plummeted, the sound echoing from the walls. 

The toxic cloud seemed to follow them down for the most part, and the remaining few tendrils of smog were already dissipating into nothingness as Crowley let go of the pipe and dropped lightly onto the steps below. Peering down into the core of the stairwell, he could make out nothing except a sort of hazy, thick darkness several floors down; he could not see past it to the bottom. There was no sign of his opponent. He wondered if the fall had killed or severely injured them; a nine-story drop would probably be catastrophic for an ordinary person, but they were no ordinary person and he did not know the extent of their powers. Moments after their frustrated scream had faded into silence, he'd heard a low, muffled-sounding thump that had sounded more like someone landing on a feather mattress than crashing into a concrete floor from nine stories up. The denseness of the smog they'd summoned had been noticeable; it wasn't a huge leap to imagine it becoming thick and tangible enough to slow or even completely stop the descent of a falling body.

And there. If he stretched the limits of his senses, he could detect that strange, swirly heat signature, with its multiple colors that didn't quite blend into one another, down below in the central well. To a first approximation, he guessed that it was located somewhere halfway down, around the fourth or fifth floor. It was burning steadily, so they clearly weren't dead, but it wasn't moving either.

He was relieved that he hadn't killed them after all, even if they had been trying to kill him first; he had never killed anyone before and would prefer not to start now if he could help it. He did not, however, have time to go find out what exactly had happened to them. Aziraphale's safety was a far more pressing concern. His heat signature still burned nearby, clear and steady and unmoving, at the edge of Crowley's vision, but, with Zuigiber and Sable in the equation, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't be snuffed out at any time. He followed it, dashing through the stairwell door and down the hall, and burst into the conference room moments later. 

All three people in the room looked up at his entrance. Aziraphale looked startled, with a wild, hopeful look in his eyes, Carmine Zuigiber had a fierce, angry scowl on her face, and Sable seemed oddly smug and calm, like he'd been expecting or even anticipating the interruption.

"So good of you to join us," said Sable in a conversational tone. "I see Chalky didn't manage to detain you for long. The Serpent, is it? We knew you wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to play the hero again. You're growing predictable. We've been looking for you for _years_ , you know."

"Well, at least you got the name right," muttered Crowley. He was only half-listening, focused instead on memorizing the layout of the room and the obstacles therein, and devising a plan of attack in his head. A leap onto the table in the center would allow him to jump up and grab the hanging light fixture, which he could then use to swing himself upward, sailing right over Sable's head. With any luck, he'd be able to pivot around in the same move and kick Zuigiber in the shoulder, knocking her off her feet in much the same way as he'd bested Chalky, before landing in front of Aziraphale and putting himself between him and the other two.

He tensed, ready to spring, but before he could do so, Sable said, calmly, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Before you try anything, you should know that Carmine there will be more than happy to take off your friend's head at the slightest provocation."

Zuigiber twirled the sword in her left hand in acknowledgement, keeping the other one pointed directly at Aziraphale, whose gaze flicked down, unflinching, to regard it. The point was six inches away from his neck.

Crowley held up his hands in the universal gesture for acquiescence. He was fast enough that there was a good chance he could still potentially make it, but Aziraphale's life was not a thing he was willing to gamble on, however favorable the odds. Not now, not ever.

"Good. I'm glad we can all be reasonable here. Although I must say, I'm a little disappointed. All those powers at your disposal, and you're still so human. _Love._ Such a weakness." Sable smiled unpleasantly; his lips were thin and his eyeteeth very white and very sharp. "Which makes me wonder. Someone as soft as you would never have been _chosen_ the way we were, so how _did_ you come by those powers of yours? Actually, no, don't tell me. I can guess. I'll bet you were present for a certain explosion down by the docks ten years ago. But there's one thing I've never understood. How did your powers manifest so early and so quickly? Everyone else who was exposed took _years_ to develop abilities. But you— the earliest reports of your escapades were _two_ _months_ after the explosion."

"Wouldn’t you like to know," hissed Crowley. 

"It's almost like you were injected directly with the serum, the same way we were. But that's not _possible._ Everyone at the explosion site was exposed by inhaling fumes."

"I'll bet that was Chalky's fault too," snarled Zuigiber from where she was standing guard over Aziraphale. "I _told_ Azrael he shouldn't have sent the kid to shut down the test site and clean up the evidence. They were too young and inexperienced, and didn't know how to control and channel their powers yet. It should have been you."

"I had more important things to do than euthanize a bunch of lab animals. And I didn’t see _you_ volunteering either," retorted Sable, then turned back to Crowley. "She's right about one thing though. The random bystanders developing powers _was_ Chalky's fault. They fucked up, got a little too carried away with the whole scorched-earth thing, and made one of the leftover vials of serum explode along with all the other chemicals.

But I guess it doesn't really matter how you got your abilities. You've given us enough trouble. It's time to get rid of you, once and for all, just like we got rid of all the others. We were supposed to be the only ones, and now we will be."

Sable advanced, a fierce, intent scowl on his face. He was thin and gaunt, and his heat signature was the weakest in the room, reading as a strange, uneasy silvery shade with barely a hint of warmth, in contrast to Aziraphale's gold-tinged orange and Zuigiber's hot, flaring red. The dust and bitter ash smell of him filled Crowley's nostrils. Sable stripped off one of his black leather gloves, tossing it carelessly aside as he placed his now-bare hand upon Crowley's forehead almost reverently, like a priest conferring a blessing.

Crowley had been contemplating the best way to either strike or dodge away without endangering Aziraphale, when abruptly he felt all four of his limbs go rubbery and weak. A cold wave of sudden fatigue swept over him and settled there like a heavy, grey blanket. His hips and knees buckled, refusing to hold his weight, and all his muscles slackened at once as he slumped over, collapsing on the floor. He lay on his side, curling weakly in on himself, and it was all he could do to force himself to keep breathing, the slow, shallow inhales an overwhelming effort. Inexplicable, intense, sharp hunger pangs gnawed at his stomach. His reflexes, normally so much faster than a human's, felt like they had slowed down to one-eighth or one-sixteenth time; he struggled to move an arm and it was like pushing it through mostly-congealed concrete, an immense, slow-motion labor. The material of his suit seemed stifling and shroud-like, pressing down intolerably on every nerve ending in his oversensitive skin. The carpet was rough and unpleasant against his cheek, but when he tried to lift his head, it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. It was cold, so cold; he could not stop shaking. He already couldn't feel his fingers and his toes, and the numbness was slowly spreading up his limbs.

Sable had crouched alongside him even as he collapsed, never once removing his hand, never once looking away.

Sounds echoed loudly in Crowley's ears, which seemed to be the only part of his body working normally at the moment. There was some kind of commotion in the background: strained creaking noises, a sharp snap, a thud. A woman's voice shouting. A rapid-fire, cacophonous flurry of metallic clangs and scrapes. The loud crash of heavy objects being knocked over. He could not make his neck work to lift his head to see what was going on; he could only look at Sable, eyes blown wide, while his body lay weak and unresponsive in a heap on the floor like a sluggish snake that had been out in the cold for too long.

Sable's cold hand pressed down against his skull.

A fresh wave of overwhelming, debilitating weakness washed over him, followed by an even more crushing wave of regret. Regret that he'd failed Aziraphale, failed to save him, failed to keep him safe. Regret that he'd never told him the whole truth about himself. Regret that he'd never told him how he felt.

He tried to open his mouth, to shape words and force them out of his slack and collapsing throat. They came out broken, half whisper and half hiss, and so quiet that not even Raven Sable, who was close enough to touch, heard them, much less Aziraphale, who was tied up and helpless on the other side of the room.

"Aziraphale… love… sssorry…"

The edges of Crowley's vision began to grow dark. His eyelids drooped and fell shut.

" _Get away from him!_ "

Aziraphale's voice, so familiar and so dear, rang out loud and clear and unwavering, like a bell in the darkness. It sounded very close. Crowley wondered, hazily, if perhaps he had already passed out and was dreaming.

He managed, with a massive, last-ditch effort, to force his leaden eyelids to open. Sable was still there, crouched above him, with that smug, unpleasant smile on his face and his icy, dust-dry hand on Crowley's forehead.

A moment later, Aziraphale was there too, looking for all the world like an angel, his pale hair a glowing halo, his heat signature a shimmering aura in Crowley's darkening vision. He was breathing heavily, but otherwise appeared unhurt and beautiful and perfect. He was, inexplicably, holding one of Carmine Zuigiber's red-hilted swords in his right hand and pointing it at Sable's back. Shreds of rope hung from both of his wrists.

Perhaps he really _was_ dreaming, or he'd died and passed on to whatever afterlife awaited someone like him. 

" _I said, get away from him!_ "

Aziraphale sounded furious now, and impossible to ignore.

Sable leapt to his feet, whirling around to see who had come up behind him. His hand left Crowley's brow as he did so. The crushing weight on Crowley's chest and limbs suddenly lightened, and he could breathe again, real, deep, shuddering breaths full of oxygen and life. His heartbeat quickened, pulsing in his ears. The strange, unnaturally strong hunger pangs in his stomach faded. Feeling and strength flooded back into his limbs all at once in a heady, prickly, dizzying rush. He pushed himself up awkwardly on his elbows, his hands and feet still full of pins and needles, to see Aziraphale facing off against Sable, holding the sword defiantly in front of him with both hands. Behind them, he could see what appeared to be several overturned chairs and potted plants, with a red-clad figure lying amongst them, struggling weakly.

"Are you all right, my dear?" Aziraphale asked. Concern flooded his face.

Sable took advantage of Aziraphale's distraction to lunge not at him, but at Crowley again, his bare hand outstretched.

There was a loud whooshing noise and a sudden pressure change that made Crowley's ears pop, as the blade in Aziraphale's hand suddenly and unexpectedly burst into flames. Tongues of orange fire licked along both long, sharp edges and converged at the tip, illuminating Aziraphale's face, which wore an expression of wide-eyed surprise mixed with fierce determination. The flames were the exact shade of his heat signature. His hands held steady as he pointed the weapon at Sable.

Sable stumbled backward in shock and attempted to retreat, sidling toward the door. His back was to Crowley, his nervous attention entirely taken up by the flaming sword. He didn't notice Crowley scrambling to his hands and knees, finally having regained control of his limbs. Aziraphale, who was facing both of them, did. He lifted one eyebrow, ever so slightly.

It was exactly the same microexpression he'd sometimes make at the office, when he wanted to surreptitiously draw Crowley's attention to something ridiculous or ironic that one of their coworkers had done. Now, Crowley took the unspoken hint, saw his opening, and struck. Still on his hands and knees, he flipped himself around and kicked out, hooking one foot around Sable's ankle to throw him off-balance.

Sable found himself sprawled on the ground, with Aziraphale's sword pointed down at his face.

Aziraphale's eyes darted back and forth between Sable, the blade, and Crowley, and after a few moments he seemed to come to a decision. He knelt, flipping the sword and raising it so that the still-flaming blade was pointed up at the ceiling, and with both hands brought the end of the hilt down hard on Sable's right temple.

Sable's body slumped in a bony, judgmental heap on the carpet. His gaunt chest rose and fell steadily, but he did not move otherwise.

"Did I—" Aziraphale began, looking at Sable's still form.

"Nah. He's still breathing. You just knocked him out. Can't think of anyone who deserved it more, to be honest. That was an impressive blow, by the way. It's not easy to knock someone out like that, no matter what they say in the movies. Takes a lot of strength. I don't think I could do it."

Aziraphale did not respond. Instead he stood up and contemplated the sword in his hands. It looked like a pillar of flames, burning a clean and smokeless orange, the metal beneath silver-bright. The flames danced and crackled; Crowley could feel the very real heat of them on his exposed face. And yet there was no fuel that he could see, nothing to burn. It was impossible. Steel didn't burn.

"It's … on fire," he said, very intelligently.

"It is," agreed Aziraphale, equally articulate. With a rueful smile, he added, "I'm afraid I'm not quite sure how to turn it off, if we're being honest. I don't really know how I turned it _on_ , for that matter. Do you have any ideas?"

Crowley, whose brain was still trying to wrap itself around the concept of _Aziraphale with a flaming sword_ , did not have any ideas. He opened his mouth to say as much, but was interrupted by a flash of red in the corner of his vision as Carmine Zuigiber, who'd apparently regained her footing, launched herself across the room, her remaining sword in hand.

She was headed straight for Aziraphale. Crowley hissed a warning, but it was too late. He could only watch in horror as she lifted the sword and swung it two-handed, with a furious shriek, at Aziraphale's unprotected back—

—only for it to clang harmlessly against the still-flaming blade of Aziraphale's own sword as he pivoted smoothly on one heel and expertly parried her blow. He then settled into a wide, defensive stance, his feet planted firmly.

Instead of immediately attempting another attack, Zuigiber simply stood there with the blade of her weapon pressed up hard against Aziraphale's, forcing a momentary stalemate. She scowled, her brow furrowed deeply. Crowley, watching from the side, could tell that she was buying time; he remembered that intent expression from when she'd attempted to use her power on him.

"Aziraphale! She's going to—"

He was cut off by Aziraphale, who murmured quietly, "I know, dear."

Aziraphale then turned to Zuigiber, and said, his voice clear and calm, "I'm afraid that won't work. You won't get me to attack him. Anger is so rarely the answer, wouldn't you say? And you already know you can't get him to attack me either, so I wouldn't bother trying if I were you."

Uncertainty washed over her features, and, despite Aziraphale's admonition, she turned her power away from him and onto Crowley, who was already anticipating the onslaught with gritted teeth. Tendrils of red coiled at the edges of his vision and a feeling of hot, irrational rage welled up in his chest, but he'd already experienced the full force of her power once before, that night in the church, and beaten it. She seemed shaken enough by Aziraphale's steady, calm rejection of her powers that the current attempt on Crowley felt relatively weak compared to what he had experienced before. There was no conviction in it.

And besides, Crowley was standing right next to Aziraphale, who was his rock, who believed in him, and next to that belief Zuigiber's power was nothing. He blinked hard and unclenched his jaw, and the crimson coils of her persuasion dissipated harmlessly away.

With a frustrated howl, Zuigiber turned back to cold steel, furiously chopping and thrusting at Aziraphale. He held his own remarkably well, striking out with his own flurry of ringing blows in between parrying her attacks. It was clear that he'd had significant experience in wielding a sword, something Crowley had not known. Zuigiber herself was obviously a skilled swordsperson as well, but her desperation and rage put her at a disadvantage, rendering her attacks wide and wild in contrast to Aziraphale's precise, calculated ones. The flames still licking up and down Aziraphale's blade (which were somehow not blowing out, despite the fact that the weapon was audibly whooshing through the air at impressive speed) effectively increased its range, and his opponent was forced to abruptly dance backward more than once to avoid being burnt.

With a final powerful lunge, Aziraphale managed to disarm Zuigiber, sending her weapon flying off to one side while she herself was forcefully thrown backward, losing her footing and crashing into the table. The moment she was down, Crowley was there, yanking one of the bracers off his own wrist and flipping it open into a pair of handcuffs. He had Zuigiber, who was momentarily stunned by her crash landing, subdued and cuffed in the blink of an eye. With the two of them both apparently immune to her power, at least when it came to each other, plus the added incentive of a flaming sword pointed directly at her chest, she put up little resistance other than a stream of vehement cursing as they backed her into a small closet in one corner of the room and locked the door from the outside.

"We should probably restrain him too," said Aziraphale, gesturing at Sable, who lay, still unconscious, on the other side of the room, "just in case he wakes up."

"Good idea. I've got a second pair of cuffs," agreed Crowley, but then stopped, sensing something. It was a heat signature, ascending at a steady pace through the stairwell at the end of the hall, the same one he'd come through earlier. He held up a hand. "Hold up one second though. There's someone coming. I fought them earlier. Chalke. Chalky. That's what Sable called them anyway."

"Have they got abilities too?"

"Yeah. Absolutely. Nasty, toxic fumes. Hard to see and breathe through. They also have some kind of acid attack. Or some sort of corrosive liquid anyway. It did this." He indicated the line of small blisters that had formed on his cheek, where he'd caught a splatter of whatever Chalke had thrown at him; he'd forgotten all about it in the subsequent chaos, but now that he was reminded of it, the wound smarted.

"Oh! That looks unpleasant. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Perhaps Crowley _had_ inhaled too many of Chalky's fumes earlier after all, because the urge to tell Aziraphale "you could kiss it better" was so strong that he had opened his mouth before he realized what he was doing.

"Nah. It'll be fine. Probably gone by tomorrow. I heal fast. And the suit caught most of it anyway."

"I'm glad to hear that. I hate to think of you in pain."

"'s not so bad," said Crowley, then fell silent, focusing on the vibrations of Chalke's approaching footfalls. "I think they've just gotten to this floor." 

Aziraphale gave him a short, singular nod of acknowledgement and adjusted his grip on his weapon.

Crowley did not suggest that Aziraphale stay back and let him take care of Chalke. Aziraphale had held his own admirably against Zuigiber just now and had flat-out rescued Crowley from Sable earlier. He wasn't, Crowley was realizing, some helpless damsel in distress to be passively rescued. He was Aziraphale; he was Crowley's smart, resourceful, just-enough-of-a-bastard, flaming-sword-wielding angel. He could not think of anyone else he'd rather fight alongside, side-by-side or back-to-back, and he was certain that together they'd be able to bring Chalke down.

He opened the door and peered out, cautiously. The hallway was quiet, but he could see when the motion-activated lights at the far end switched on, heralding Chalke's entrance by way of the stairwell door. The fumes were already beginning to coalesce around them. They were carrying an approximately two-foot-long length of rusty pipe with jagged, broken-off ends in their right hand, and had a fresh, still-bleeding gash on one cheek and several new tears in their clothing, presumably sustained during the fall.

Crowley and Aziraphale stepped out into the hall. About midway down was a door that someone had left open, revealing a small, windowless room that housed a large printer and several shelves of office supplies. Aziraphale pointed at it, wordlessly; Crowley nodded once.

The leading edge of the stinking, chemical-laden cloud crept closer and closer; it had become dense and dark enough that the bright fluorescents overhead were nearly useless. There was a pop accompanied by a sharp, metallic smell as one of them exploded, and a coil of something silvery snaked its way down to swirl into the roiling haze. Chalke's figure was nothing more than a wavering, pale, barely-visible reverse silhouette at its heart. Crowley took one last deep breath of clean air, and put one palm against the wall in preparation to clamber up onto the ceiling. It wasn't as high here as it had been in the stairwell, but hopefully it would still afford him some relief from the fumes. Aziraphale had no such built-in escape option, but he was clever and resourceful and adaptable, and would know when to press forward and when to retreat. He had Crowley's back, and Crowley trusted him.

Crowley did not escape to the ceiling, not just yet. Instead he stood side-by-side with Aziraphale, facing forward into the miasma. And when the cloud of fumes rolled over them in a great, inevitable, crashing wave, it broke around the flaming sword in Aziraphale's hand, all of the dark, dirty haze within reach of the flames burning away without a trace. In its wake, it left a thin sliver of clean, sweet air to wash over them, just enough to allow them to breathe freely.

It was enough. Without the incapacitating dizziness from the toxic vapors, Crowley could focus on tracking Chalke by their heat signature and vibrations through the cloud, landing precise, quick hits with his hands and feet where he could. Aziraphale's sword afforded him just enough of a line of sight that he could parry the swings of Chalke's makeshift weapon and issue his own offensive with tightly controlled, graceful swings and jabs and thrusts. Chalke soon realized that their acid attacks were useless, as Crowley could anticipate and dodge them, and the droplets of liquid fizzled harmlessly away upon coming into contact with the scouring fire of Aziraphale's blade. They began to focus in earnest on trying to disarm Aziraphale instead.

Now Crowley leapt up onto the wall and flattened himself against the ceiling, in the thin band of clear air above the fumes; in this position, he carefully maneuvered his way down the hall, keeping pace with Aziraphale and Chalke, who were locked in combat below. Aziraphale's swordsmanship was beautiful to watch, even in abbreviated flashes and sparks through the fog, as he slowly, steadily, gained ground and forced his opponent to retreat down the hallway.

Just as they reached the printer closet Aziraphale had pointed out earlier, Crowley dropped down from the ceiling, flinging himself bodily at Chalke. Simultaneously, Aziraphale sidestepped deftly away. The combination of the sudden impact of Crowley's body unexpectedly crashing into them from above and the abrupt lack of resistance to the swing of their weapon knocked Chalke off-balance, and the momentum sent them careening in a wide, swinging arc straight through the doorway. Aziraphale immediately slammed the door shut and locked it, trapping them inside.

The majority of the dark cloud had, just as in the stairwell earlier, gone along with Chalke into the closet, although a few oily-looking swirls and eddies could be seen leaking out from the edges and around the hinges of the locked door. Crowley and Aziraphale grinned at each other in the suddenly clear air of the hallway, both breathing heavily, both exhilarated.

Just as they had worked together to unravel Agnes' riddles and investigate the activities of Four Horse, it turned out that they could also work perfectly in tandem to fight villains. They'd been able to anticipate each other's moves, communicating with the smallest gestures. A particular quirk of the eyebrow, a miniscule shift of the eyes, all the tiny idiosyncrasies of body language. The kinds of things it took years – a decade, even – of familiarity to learn about another person.

Crowley had almost forgotten, in the heady rush of their shared triumph, that Aziraphale still thought Crowley and the Serpent were two entirely different people.

Almost, but not quite. He wondered nervously if Aziraphale too had noticed how curiously comfortable and familiar it had felt to work together like this, if he was questioning why they'd so easily been able to interpret each other's wordless gestures. If Aziraphale _had_ noticed, however, he was keeping quiet about it.

Chalke having been neutralized, they returned to the conference room, where Zuigiber could be heard cursing from the closet in the corner and ineffectively banging her cuffed wrists against the door. Sable was still lying on the ground, unconscious, right where they'd left him. Crowley removed his second handcuff bracer, a twin to the one he'd used on Zuigiber. He snapped one ring of them around a pipe protruding from the radiator into the wall. Without needing to be asked, Aziraphale dragged Sable's body over so that Crowley could gingerly lock the other half of the cuffs around his right wrist, the ungloved one. Crowley himself was wearing gloves, and Sable was unconscious, but he still shuddered a little when his glove brushed Sable's bare skin, remembering how helpless he'd felt under Sable's power and how inevitable his own demise had seemed.

He stood up, dusting his hands on his thighs, and turned to Aziraphale.

"I think we're all set. He won't be going anywhere."

"Shouldn't we contact someone about him? And the others?" 

"Yeah, probably. I'll call the police once I get back to my B— my, um… my base. Of operations. Right. Anyway, I'll let them know. Pretty sure they should be able to charge them with murder for killing the security guard outside. Nobody needs to know you were involved."

"You should probably tell them not to let him touch anyone. And about the others as well. Their abilities."

"I'll do that."

Crowley hesitated for a moment, and then offered Aziraphale a hand. "Walk you home?"

He wasn't quite sure what exactly he was offering, or what Aziraphale would be willing to accept, but it was an invitation. It was a start.

Aziraphale gazed solemnly at him, and then at the proffered hand, but made no move to take it. He swallowed visibly, the bump of his Adam's apple rising and falling, and opened his mouth. Before he could say anything, though, the door to the room swung open, slowly and silently.

The flames that had burned steadily over the blade of the sword in Aziraphale's hand ever since he'd faced off against Sable guttered and died, all at once, snuffed out like a candle in an airless room. Along with them went what felt like every scrap of warmth in the world.

They both turned to face the open doorway. There was nobody there. There was absolutely no heat signature.

Crowley felt something, nonetheless. A cold, invisible presence, something heavier than air or apprehension. The overwhelming impression was that of something enormous and all-encompassing. It did not feel malevolent, exactly, but was nevertheless deeply, viscerally, unsettling.

This was not a thing that the Serpent could even begin to fight, not if he'd had a whole arsenal of otherworldly powers at his disposal. He wanted to reach out for Aziraphale's hand, but found that he seemed to be paralyzed, not in the weak, trembling way rendered by Sable's powers, but like he was encased in ice. 

Whatever happened now, he understood, was inevitable.

Nothing happened, except that the weighty, chilling sense of existential dread lightened minutely, like a choice had been made, or a point conceded. There was a miniscule vibration, somewhere close by on Crowley's left. It felt like someone exhaling or perhaps laughing, softly, under their breath, but Aziraphale was to his right, Sable lay unconscious clear across the room, and there was nobody else near enough.

And then, just as he'd managed to halfway convince himself that the whole thing was nothing but a product of his overactive, overstimulated imagination, he heard a voice, hollow and whispery, soft and shivery as feathers and somehow amused. It only uttered a single word, but it felt like it had been injected straight into his brain.

" _INEFFABLE."_

This was followed by the sound of soft, unhurried footsteps, and a whooshing noise like wings or the swish of fabric.

The door closed, just as silently as it had opened.

The heavy pall, the sensation of irrevocable dread, lifted. The sounds of the world came back – the whir of the air conditioner, the distant buzz of traffic on the boulevard outside, the tick of the second hand on the clock on the far wall. Crowley felt shaken, right down to his very core; he was certain that he'd come very close to understanding something that was not meant to ever be understood. A shiver went down his spine, like icy fingers touching each of the vertebra in turn, one by one, the pressure not hard enough to hurt but more than enough for awareness.

He turned to his right, instinctively, looking for solace, for warmth.

Aziraphale was there, already looking back, with a haunted look on his face that perfectly mirrored Crowley's thoughts.

"Angel," he said shakily. "What the _fuck_ was that."

Aziraphale's mouth dropped open, the solemn look on his face melting into pure shock, and the sword in his hand fell to the floor with a loud, ringing clatter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last cliffhanger, I promise!
> 
> (Also I'm pretty sure that at least one or two of you guessed that this was how Crowley would slip up in the end...)


	13. Angel

Aziraphale and Crowley stared at each other, both momentarily frozen in shock.

The icy shivers down Crowley's spine transformed into a different sort of shaking altogether, as a sudden onslaught of _adrenaline-panic-fear-hope_ coursed through him. It felt as though the vibration sense normally housed in his jaw had expanded into his shaking hands and trembling knees and unstable hips, turning his entire body into one enormous, thudding, staccato heartbeat. He felt paralyzed, unable to do anything but wish uselessly that he could turn into an actual snake and slither away to hide somewhere dark and isolated for the next hundred years.

“Only one person in the world calls me that,” Aziraphale said softly, and reached out, his hand hovering a hairsbreadth away from Crowley's face. 

He stopped then, meeting Crowley's eyes. Even through his panic, Crowley recognized that Aziraphale was giving him an out, that he was saying _Just tell me no and we'll never speak of this again_. He was giving him the chance, the _choice,_ to run like he'd done before. Aziraphale would keep his secrets, would respect his choice not to let that last facade of secrecy between them drop, would keep up the fiction of his ignorance, should Crowley choose to say no. Still, it would be only that, a fiction. There was no question that Aziraphale _knew_ now, and that unspoken knowledge would inevitably change their relationship. This was it, he thought. He could stand and face the truth, allowing Aziraphale to breach that last fraction of an inch between them, or he could run.

Crowley suddenly, viscerally, could not bear the thought of keeping any more secrets from Aziraphale.

He swallowed, hard, and nodded, a tiny incline of his head. It felt like a monumental achievement.

Aziraphale's hand brushed briefly, softly, against his temple; in that split second, that barest touch, Crowley noticed that it was trembling, ever so slightly. And then those fingers had caught on the edge of his hood, were pushing it backward. Crowley let it fall, while blood roared in his ears and his heart thundered in his jaw.

The fabric slipped softly down, revealing flame-bright hair and the snake tattoo beside his ear.

They gazed at each other for a moment in silence, during which Crowley felt very keenly his lack of sunglasses to hide behind. Then he began to babble, hardly aware of what he was saying.

"I'm sorry, Angel, I didn’t mean to lead you on, I wanted to tell you, I just didn't know how, you have to believe me. Please don't hate me—"

He stopped, because Aziraphale's hand had curved around to cup the side of his face, his thumb tracing softly across the line of Crowley's jaw, dissipating the tight, nervous tension there.

"I could never hate you," Aziraphale whispered, and kissed him.

Crowley knew what it felt like to fall, to accidentally lose his footing while scaling a tall building, to suddenly plummet down several stories in the time it took to draw one breath, to see the ground approaching far too quickly, to wildly wonder whether this was the day that his reflexes would finally fail him, to feel all his senses sharpening to a desperate, knife-sharp point, to whoop with heart-pounding relief when he finally caught himself with one hand on an overhang as he careened past at the speed of gravity. It was always a mingled, heady combination of terror and adrenaline. The world always seemed a little brighter afterwards, a little more beautiful. It was nothing, _nothing,_ compared to the feeling that rushed over him now. He felt like he had stepped off the top of a skyscraper so high that he couldn't even see the ground, and was plummeting down, down, down, but there was no fear or panic, only exhilaration and joy, because the world had rearranged and expanded itself in wonderful and mysterious ways between one moment and the next.

"I could never hate you," repeated Aziraphale. "I love you too much."

"I love you too." There was a strange sort of lightness, a swooping feeling in his chest, that accompanied the admission. It was a truth he'd held close to his heart for so many years, one he'd never thought would see the light of day. "I'll tell you everything, Angel. I promise. Anything you want to know. Anything."

"I have so much I want—no, I need—to tell you too," began Aziraphale. 

He was interrupted by a loud thump and a muffled curse coming from the direction of the closet in which they had locked Carmine Zuigiber. From the sound of it, she was attempting to throw herself against the door, without any success. They'd both forgotten entirely about her presence, and that of Sable, who was still lying unconscious beside the radiator. Even if she could have heard their soft conversation across the room and through the thick wood of the closet door, Crowley was fairly certain that neither he nor Aziraphale had said anything too incriminating. Still, it didn't seem wise to push their luck any further.

"On second thought, this doesn't seem like the best place to have this talk," amended Aziraphale. "Perhaps we should, ah, adjourn to somewhere a bit less perilous?"

You could come over to my place, if you'd like," offered Crowley.

Aziraphale smiled, and took his hand.

"That sounds perfect."

They made it out of the building without further incident. Crowley took them down a different set of stairs, on the opposite side of the building from the one he'd fought Chalke in, just in case there were any additional traps or residual toxins. One could never be too careful, after all.

The dead security guard was still lying outside the back door to the building. Crowley squeezed Aziraphale's hand a little tighter, and felt him squeeze back, as they passed the body. Now that he'd experienced Sable's power for himself, Crowley had an idea of what horrors the poor guard had gone through, and it was a sobering thought. So too was the knowledge that, were it not for Aziraphale's last-minute intervention, Crowley himself would very likely have suffered the same fate.

Tucked securely beneath one of the windshield wipers of the Bentley, they found a note, penned in black ink on a scrap of brittle, yellowed newspaper. There was only one person it could have been from. She'd even signed it, for once.

> _'Tis high time the pair of you figured things out. Might as well have been six thousand years. –Agnes_
> 
> _PS – You can relax. The police will take care of cleaning things up. Tip them off and enjoy the rest of your evening. Trust me, it'll be a good one._

Well, Agnes had spoken, and it was nice to have the reassurance that nobody else would be coming after them tonight. Crowley did as she suggested, and left an anonymous tip on the police department's website:

> _This is the Serpent. If you go over to the Four Horse building down on Garden, I've left you some presents up on the top floor. Be careful. They're dangerous, even when restrained. They killed at least one person, a security guard, before I got there. You'll find the body outside, down by the back entrance. The woman in red – don't let more than one person in the room with her at a time. Preferably the most levelheaded person you've got. Get her blindfolded if you can. I think she needs a line of sight to use her ability. And the man in black – hopefully he'll still be unconscious, but if not, don't let him touch you. I don't know what happens if_ you _touch_ him _, but just to be on the safe side, I'd avoid any and all contact with his bare skin. And the person in white – you'll want gas masks, full hazmat suits. I think that oughtta do it. Trust me, you don't want to mess around with them._

With any luck, they'd take him seriously and take the appropriate precautions. Just to cover all his bases, he texted Tracy, who had connections in high places in the police department:

> _Hey Trace, could you do me a favor and give your friends in the police a ring? Tell them to take my warnings seriously. Don't want anyone to get hurt._

> _And thank you. Your suit saved my ass more than once tonight. I owe you the biggest box of chocolates._

After a moment's consideration, he sent her one more message. Perhaps it was a bit premature, but he couldn't help himself.

> _And maybe I'll bring someone to see you next time I come for tea._

It was late, nearly midnight according to the clock on the Bentley's instrument panel, but he was fairly certain Tracy would still be up. Her schedule, like his, had a decidedly nocturnal (if less solitary) bent. His instincts were proven correct when she replied less than a minute later:

> _Ooh la la._
> 
> _Have a good night. ;)_
> 
> _(Consider your favor done. You'll tell me all about your adventures next week, I trust.)_

When Crowley looked up from his phone, it was to the sight of Aziraphale, ensconced in his familiar place in the passenger seat of the Bentley. He had been examining Agnes' note with obvious curiosity.

"This is from the same person who sends you the cryptograms, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Her name is Agnes. I met her a long time ago. Not long after I met you, in fact. Wait… you knew? That the cryptograms weren't just games?"

"Well, yes. The solutions were too bizarre. Nobody in their right mind would make a logic puzzle where the answer was an incomprehensible combination of random numbers and archaic English, and yet you were always absolutely certain that we'd gotten it right."

"Should've known you'd catch on. You're too clever. Always have been."

"I figured out a long time ago that you weren't writing an article about puzzles."

"Why'd you play along then? You never said anything!"

"Well, it was an excuse, wasn't it? To spend time with you. And besides, it was fun, solving them together."

"You weren't curious? About what they actually were?"

"Oh, I _was_. They made _no sense_ and it was insanely frustrating. And you always just deflected whenever I brought it up. But I figured if I was patient you'd tell me eventually, when you were ready."

"Don't play coy, Angel. Eventually being _now_ is what you mean. I can practically _taste_ your burning curiosity. But I did promise to tell you everything, didn't I? Well, here goes. I'm pretty sure Agnes can predict the future. Or some small part of it at least. The cryptograms in the paper are her way of sending me warnings. A stock tip once in a while. You know the "financial advisor" I talk about sometimes? That's her."

"I _had_ wondered about that. Try as I might, I could never picture you sitting down with some stuffed suit in an office somewhere to discuss _financial planning_ , but you obviously have money. When you bought this car, for one thing. It must have cost a fortune, and I couldn't imagine that Gabriel and Beelzebub were paying you enough that you could easily afford it."

"Did you think I was up to something shady?" asked Crowley, arching an eyebrow.

"No. I know you'd never do anything deliberately malicious, although I did wonder at first if you weren't being a bit financially reckless. But eventually I decided you must have just had an independent source of income, an inheritance or a trust fund or something like that, and that you _wanted_ people to think you were flashy and reckless."

"People see the flash and think they know what I'm like. Shallow. Reckless. They never bother to look any deeper."

"That's their loss. By the way, did you happen to notice the date on this?" asked Aziraphale, pointing at the date printed in the corner of the piece of newspaper Agnes' note was written on.

Crowley looked and felt his eyebrows lift as he recognized the date, ten years in the past.

"That's… the date we met. You and I."

"Does that mean she knew about this? About us? All along?"

"Probably. Actually, scratch that. She definitely knew."

Crowley rolled his eyes a little at Agnes' cheek, but he took the note from Aziraphale and tucked it away in the glove compartment for safekeeping nevertheless.

"Anyway, I don't blame you if you think this all sounds crazy—"

"Not any more crazy than anything else that's happened tonight," murmured Aziraphale, placing his hand over Crowley's, the tips of his fingers curling around Crowley's palm.

"I know, Angel. Doesn't feel quite real. I keep wondering when I'm going to wake up from this dream. Or maybe Sable managed to kill me after all, and this is whatever afterlife people like me go to."

"I assure you, this is very much real, and you are— _we_ are both very much alive," said Aziraphale fiercely, and leaned in to kiss him. It was almost bruising in its intensity, and the pressure, the warmth and wetness, of Aziraphale's mouth against his simultaneously grounded him and made his head spin.

Before they pulled out of the parking lot, Crowley threw his discarded jacket on over the suit, swapped the boots for his impractical snakeskin shoes, and slipped his sunglasses over his eyes. Buttoned up, the blazer hid the recognizable serpent insignia on his chest, and in the early morning darkness he looked like just another person dressed in dark, fitted clothing, coming home a little pleasantly worse for wear after a late Saturday night out. He didn’t bother with the non-trivial effort of struggling back into the confines of his civilian trousers - the bottom half of the suit was plain black and really only slightly snugger than his usual jeans anyway. People went out at night in more risqué things all the time, and the juxtaposition of the slick, skintight leggings with his tailored, sharp-shouldered blazer and pointed snakeskin shoes was a flashy look that neatly matched the mostly incorrect assumptions people had about him. He’d encountered his neighbors several times before while dressed in similar ensembles, complete with the suit leggings, and any second glances he'd gotten had been decidedly of the _check out that flash bastard and his very nice ass_ variety and not the _hey, have you by any chance been scaling any tall buildings lately_ variety.

(The assumptions might have been wrong, but the look _was_ pretty cool, if he said so himself. And if the sidelong glances Aziraphale kept throwing in his direction (and that of his _very nice ass_ ) were any indication, he was not the only one appreciating the aesthetic.)

Had they actually run into a neighbor in the garage or the elevator, which they did not, that person might have found it gossip-worthy that notorious loner Anthony J. Crowley seemed to be bringing a guest home to his place, something he'd never done in all the years he'd lived there. Both men looked a bit disheveled, their clothing a little askew, their hair a little mussed, their lips a little red: it wasn't hard to come to the obvious conclusion.

The obvious conclusion, even if it was not the _only_ conclusion, was not wrong, for once.

There was nothing inherently sexy in stripping the suit off at the end of the night, despite what the movies wanted you to believe and notwithstanding the fact that it had technically come from a high-end sex shop. Most of the time, it was slightly smelly and clammy with cooled sweat, and the only pleasure to be had was the relief of shucking it off as quickly as possible in favor of a long, hot shower.

But Crowley had never before allowed himself to consider the possibility of someone _else_ removing it. Someone else specifically being Aziraphale. And yes, he was sweaty from exertion and nerves and probably didn't smell all that nice, but all that was forgotten in the wake of Aziraphale's breath hot on his neck as he detached the hood and let it fall softly to the floor, Aziraphale's knuckles brushing across the knobs of his spine as he pulled the hidden back zipper slowly down, Aziraphale's broad hands easing the fabric down off his shoulders, Aziraphale's mouth kissing each inch of skin as it was revealed, Aziraphale's gentle teasing that the stretchy suit was probably a damn sight easier to remove than Crowley's typical, nearly-as-tight denim trousers, Aziraphale's lips cool in the depression at the base of his spine.

Crowley had often wondered what it would feel like to have his secrets stripped away, whether he'd feel like a pale, vulnerable thing lost in the desert and burning away under a withering sun. And he _was_ bare now, literally and figuratively, but it was Aziraphale's hands peeling his defenses away along with the suit, Aziraphale's body pressed protectively over his, Aziraphale's mouth swallowing each one of his secrets and promising to keep them safe.

The soft, vulnerable core of him would still remain hidden from the rest of the world, but never again from Aziraphale.

And if he had thought the moans that Aziraphale made while eating a perfect mille-feuille were titillating, it was only because he'd never known until now what it felt like when those moans were amplified a thousand-fold and uttered against his own mouth, vibrating and reverberating through his mandible and down the length of his taut, arching spine.

And if he had thought before that the feel of Aziraphale's body, soft and hard at once, against his own through the suit was exquisite, it was nothing compared to the feel of that body pressed up against his bare skin, pressed up hot and tight inside him, making every single one of his millions of human and superhuman nerve endings come alive all at once.

Aziraphale was a blazing star, white-hot, in Crowley's heat-seeking senses. Infrared heat radiated off his skin in brilliant sparks that settled on and seeped into Crowley’s own skin, and their two heat signatures overlapped and blurred together, until all the sharp edges and delineations and demarcations were gone.

* * *

Agnes and Tracy had both been right, as they always were. It had turned out to be a _very_ good night. For one thing, Crowley had discovered several more, very interesting, uses for his tongue, all of which were immensely more pleasurable than wiggling it around inside of a rusty lock. For another thing, he'd learned that it was actually possible (and utterly incredible, the way he thought it must feel to fly without fear of falling) to have an orgasm while splayed up against a wall, if you had an angel with super strength holding you up.

And, perhaps best of all, he awoke to the first hints of pre-dawn light peeking through the window and a soft, substantial warmth against his back. There were sturdy fingers, a broad palm, splayed out across the promontory of his hipbone, with just enough weight and heat to them to assure him that the previous evening had all been real and not a dream.

Aziraphale stirred against his back, his fingers flexing and tightening against Crowley's hip in sleepy protest when Crowley attempted to move.

"C'mon, sleepyhead," Crowley said, rolling out of bed with some regret and reaching for his bathrobe. "I want to show you something."

Aziraphale grumbled but got up nonetheless, wrapping his bare body in the duvet to ward off the morning chill. He rubbed his hand across his eyes, blinked, and then rubbed his eyes again, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Is that…your Serpent symbol _embroidered on the pocket of your robe?_ A white, fluffy robe at that. And here I thought I'd seen everything."

"Tracy sent it to me two birthdays ago as a gag gift, I swear. I'd _never_."

"Admit it. You love it."

" _Fine_. I do love it. 'S my favorite. But _only_ because it's the softest robe I own."

Aziraphale couldn't contain his mirth any longer. His laughter rang through the cold, pre-dawn air of the flat, which had been home to only Crowley's solitary, quiet presence for its entire existence; it was a beautiful sound, and one Crowley could get used to hearing, even if the laughter was mostly at his expense.

A moment later, he felt strong arms wrapping around his midsection, the sturdy heft of a chest and stomach pushing gently against his in a full-body embrace, Aziraphale's face nuzzling up right at the sensitive juncture where his shoulder and neck met.

"All right, all right. I concede. You're right. This really is the softest robe. Good lord. If I owned this, I'd never take it off."

Crowley enjoyed his triumph for all of ten seconds, before Aziraphale's sharp eyes caught sight of his slippers, which matched the robe, Serpent insignia and all, and he burst into fresh peals of laughter all over again.

"When you're done laughing at me, _Angel_ , I really did want to show you something," grumbled Crowley, trying his hardest to keep the smile off his face.

He pulled Aziraphale through the corridor, demonstrating the hidden opening mechanism to his secret lair with a dramatic flourish. He still felt, even after years and years, incredibly cool doing so. (Well, as cool as one could possibly look while wearing a plush bathrobe and matching slippers, with bed-ruffled hair and kiss-swollen mouth and what was probably the sappiest expression in the whole damn city.)

Aziraphale bit back a grin and chuckled, and it was so much, _so much_ , like Crowley had imagined, right down to the little fond, amused tilt of the head, that he just had to kiss him right then and there.

Together, they stood in front of the tall east-facing windows of Crowley's secret hideout, surrounded by lush houseplants, and watched the sun rise over the New Eden skyline, the blazing brightness of it burning away the last of the overnight fog. And then Crowley told Aziraphale everything, about the warehouse and the snake and Agnes and Tracy and the Serpent, about all of the lonely rooftops and solitary patrols, all of the secrets and all of the dissembling, and Aziraphale listened raptly, without any interruption save for the occasional nod or sharp intake of breath.

"Are you very mad at me?" asked Crowley, once he'd run all the way up to the present and there was no more story to hide behind. "For keeping all this a secret from you for so long?"

"No. I'm not angry. There's a part of me that wishes you'd felt comfortable enough to tell me earlier. You've been so alone, and it breaks my heart a little bit to think you didn't have to be, if only I'd _known_. But I _do_ understand why you thought you had to. After all, I've been struggling myself with whether to tell you about my own … err, abilities, I suppose. I have to admit to feeling a good deal of relief as well. This explains so much."

"Oh?"

"Not about you. About _me_. When he— you, that is— kissed me that night at the church, it felt like something I’d been wanting, waiting for even, for a very long time, and it didn’t make any _sense_ , because I thought we'd only just met the one time before. I wanted him, and I also wanted you. I wanted both of you so much, and well, it was torturing me, to be honest. I felt like I was cheating on you. Which was ridiculous. I know it was. It wasn't like you and I were _together_ , as much as I wanted us to be."

“How long have you wanted this? Wanted us? Wanted me? Crowley-me, I mean, not Serpent-me. Damn, this is confusing. Why didn't you ever _say_ something?”

"It's been nearly _ten years_ , Crowley, and you've never responded to my signals. You turned me down _every time_ I suggested that you come up to my place. It always seemed to make you uncomfortable when I asked. And well, I know why now, but at the time I thought you just weren't interested in being more than friends, and I didn't want to push and make you any more uncomfortable. Your friendship meant too much to me to risk that. So I stopped asking, but I was never interested in anyone else; I didn't know that I would ever be, and I thought I'd made my peace with that. And so when I met the Serpent, it was all terribly confusing, because I didn't think I was over you at all."

"So let me get this straight. You thought I wasn't interested and then when you _finally_ decided to go after someone else, you chose _my_ _other identity_?"

"Well, it appears I have a type, even if I didn't realize it at the time. And I felt that we had something in common, you know, what with the strange abilities and everything. But after you tried to kiss me that day in the office, everything got even more muddled. I've thought about things a great deal in the last couple of weeks. And well, I think I'd mostly managed to convince myself that my feelings for the Serpent were some sort of transference thing, because I thought I couldn't have who I really wanted. I don't know if I really believed that fully, though. In any case, I knew I had to choose, as much as I didn't want to, because it wasn't fair to either of you to string you both along. So I was planning to break up with him—you—oh, this is confusing. I was going to break up with Serpent-you, so I could be with Crowley-you. Provided you were still interested, of course. I had the entire plan worked out in my head. When we got back to my place after dinner last night, I was going to come clean and tell you everything. About me and my abilities, and about my relationship, such as it was, with the Serpent. And if you still wanted to be with me, then I was going to break up with him—you—tomorrow evening."

"Y'know, you managed to make me jealous of myself for a while there."

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to choose. I'm glad I don't have to."

"And also - you were going to break up with me, Angel? I'm _wounded_."

"Yes, but I was going to do it so that I could— oh, stop teasing me, you fiend!"

"Can't help it. You bring out the best in me."

Crowley's smirk was short-lived, as Aziraphale managed to very effectively wipe it off his face by crowding into his space and pressing him bodily up against the floor-to-ceiling window. He'd dropped the duvet somewhere along the way.

"You're utterly impossible, you know that?" asked Aziraphale, the words garbled a bit by the fact that his tongue was still halfway in Crowley's mouth. His hands, meanwhile, were busy making the ties of Crowley's robe come undone.

Any clever retort Crowley had in his brain had fled the premises. In lieu of words, he tilted his hips upward, and Aziraphale responded in kind, equally wordless and entirely understood.

Afterward, they lay on the floor, wrapped up in the discarded duvet and bathrobe.

"You really should get some more comfortable furniture in here, darling. If we're going to be making a habit of this."

"Doesn't go with the whole cool secret lair aesthetic," protested Crowley, waving a hand around lazily to indicate their surroundings.

"Neither do the plants, dear. Or these fuzzy slippers of yours."

" _Fine_. Maybe I'll get a couch. But in _black._ No tartan."

"Although… that ridiculous throne of yours does have potential. But perhaps more for _during_ , not after."

"Ngk."

"And you're absolutely, positively _certain_ these windows of yours are one-way glass?"

"Yeah. I practice climbing around on them sometimes and nobody's ever been any the wiser. Listen, if you're not convinced, go outside and look and I'll, I dunno, drop trou in front of them."

"That would necessitate you putting on trousers in the first place. Are you _really_ sure you want to do that? I would be terribly disappointed."

"Guess you'll just never know then, will ya?"

"I'll live."

"You know, when I had this place built, I paid extra for impact-proof glass for the windows. I just thought it was neat. Never thought I'd actually get to test it out."

"I don't think that was quite the sort of impact the manufacturers had in mind."

"Should write a testimonial. Withstands ten solid minutes of getting fucked into the glass by an angel with superhuman strength."

"Let's not be hasty. I think more testing may be in order first. Just to be thorough."

"Mmm. Sounds like a solid plan to me. Walls are soundproof too, by the way."

"Speaking of trousers-free activities, a hot shower sounds absolutely divine right now. Would you care to join me?"

(Hot showers _were_ divine, especially with company.)

They found themselves in Crowley's kitchen afterward, because Aziraphale had grown peckish. (Truthfully, they'd both worked up quite an appetite, but Aziraphale was rather more vocal about such things than Crowley.) Crowley's kitchen was alarmingly understocked, as he generally couldn't be arsed to cook for himself given that he had a demanding day job plus an extremely time-consuming hobby. As such, he survived primarily on takeaway and ramen packets and the occasional hard-boiled egg (because, early ill-advised attempts at egg-swallowing notwithstanding, they were an excellent, easy source of protein). Still, Aziraphale somehow managed, in between tutting about the unacceptable dearth of aprons and normal-sized mixing bowls, to scrounge up milk and flour and eggs, and he was making pancakes.

This, for some reason, was perhaps the most surreal thing that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours – Aziraphale with his hair still damp from the shower, wearing Crowley's fluffy white bathrobe and not a stitch else, standing at Crowley's stove in Crowley's kitchen, flipping pancakes. It was mundane and domestic and exquisite, and so impossibly far beyond the realm of what he had ever allowed himself to think was possible that every other thing in his life, up to and including being bitten by a mutant snake and developing inexplicable powers, seemed commonplace.

The pancakes were delicious, even if they _had_ turned out slightly burnt because Crowley had managed to successfully distract Aziraphale several times during the process.

Aziraphale set a plate piled high with pancakes down on the kitchen island, moving a pair of Crowley's discarded sunglasses, one of many strewn about the flat, out of the way as he did so.

"These are a ridiculous disguise."

"Pretty damn effective though. Worked on you for years and years, didn't they?"

"I'm sure I would have figured it out, sooner or later," said Aziraphale smugly. "Your mouth. It's very recognizable."

"Sure, sure. You would have figured out what literally nobody else has been able to for ten years. Well, except for Agnes, but she has an unfair advantage."

"Yes, but I have an advantage of my own, you see. I'm certain that _literally nobody else_ , including Agnes, has spent as much time as I have looking at your mouth, dear."

"You kissed that mouth and didn't know it was me!"

"I was distracted! You're very distracting. In all your guises. And besides, it wasn't like I had kissed you as Crowley yet, so I had nothing to compare it to."

"Well, now that you have, what's your assessment?"

"Mmm, I don't know. I think I shall reserve judgment until I've gathered more evidence."

"Could start now."

(The pancakes got cold. They were still delicious anyway.)

"Where'd you learn to fight with a sword anyway?"

"I used to fence in my younger days. I _know_ I've mentioned it to you before. My father and grandfather were in the military, so when I was a child I learned to fence and box and shoot. I think my father was hoping it would get me interested in following in their footsteps. It didn't work, obviously, but it turned out that I actually liked fencing and had some decent skill at it."

"I do remember you telling me that, but I didn't know you meant _actual sword fighting_."

"Crowley, what exactly did you think fencing _was_?"

"Dunno, it's all funny uniforms and masks and rules and _en garde_ and all that nonsense."

"Well, it _is_ that, I suppose, but at its heart fencing is swordplay."

"Yeah, but fencing is geeky. Not…" Crowley made a flailing gesture with his hands in Aziraphale's general direction, at a loss to explain what exactly it was about _Aziraphale with a sword_ that he found so compelling. "Bloody sexy, is what you are. Badass. Like an avenging angel."

"I don't see why it can't be both sexy and geeky," said Aziraphale archly. "You manage that feat quite well yourself, after all."

"I _do not_."

"Oh, fine. You do not manage your undeniable combination of geekery and sexiness with any degree of grace whatsoever. There. Happy?"

"You're such a bastard."

"Anyway, I haven't fenced in years, but back in the day I used to be fairly good and it appears that the muscle memory is still there. It's like riding a velocipede, apparently. I should start practicing again. The fire bit though. _That_ was new."

"Was that the first time you've done it then?"

"What, set a sword on fire? I should think so."

"Think you can do it again?"

"With what? Do you happen to have a spare sword lying around this flat?"

"I can go get the one from last night. It's in the boot of the Bentley. Didn't want the police to get a hold of it, in case it had your fingerprints on it."

"Oh, that was thoughtful of you, dear. Thank you."

"I've been doing this a long time, Angel. 'S why the suit has gloves. So. Want me to go fetch the sword?"

"Maybe we should start with something smaller. Just in case."

"Oh. Good idea. Wouldn't want to set off the smoke detectors in here or anything."

Crowley rummaged around in a drawer and emerged triumphantly with a butter knife, which he handed to Aziraphale.

"How's that?"

Aziraphale contemplated the blunt blade quizzically for a moment, then admitted ruefully, "I have no idea how I actually _did_ that, you know."

"Don't think too hard about it. At least for me, the trick to most of what I can do is trusting my instincts."

"You may be right. I remember… I wasn't thinking about the sword at all when it happened. Sable was _hurting_ you and all I could think about was that I needed to _protect_ you."

"So… intent maybe. Makes sense. I'm pretty sure that's how the more active powers, like Zuigiber's or Sable's, work. I can't turn mine off, really, but it's not like you're going around setting everything you touch on fire. You have to _want_ it. You have to believe in it."

"But do I really want to light this knife on fire? It seems… rather violent."

"You wanted to protect me. You can use it to protect and defend. You don't have to actually stab anyone."

"All right. I'll just—" Aziraphale stopped suddenly, his mouth falling open in a surprised O, as the blade of the butter knife suddenly burst into a five-inch column of smokeless orange flames. His hand tightened around the handle. "Oh dear. I nearly dropped that, and wouldn't that have been a disaster."

He adjusted his grip and waved it around experimentally several times, tentative at first and then with more determination. The flames made a slight whooshing sound but burned steadily despite the rapid motion. 

"How do you suppose I make it stop?"

"No clue. Put it out with water? Or I think I have a fire extinguisher somewhere around here, but who knows how old it is."

Aziraphale gingerly stuck the knife, blazing point down, into an empty drinking glass on the table.

"Could you, erm, perhaps go get me some water--" he began, letting go of the handle. The moment his hand lost contact with the knife, the flames simply ceased to exist. "Oh. Well, that's convenient."

"I'll say."

"I suppose now I know that it wasn't a fluke."

"So you've got super strength, and this flaming knife-sword-whatever thing. What else have you got up your sleeve, Angel?"

"Nothing, as far as I know. But I didn't know about the sword thing until yesterday, so…"

"You were there, weren't you? The warehouse explosion where I got bitten."

"I was, actually. Well, not _at_ the explosion, but just down the street. There was a discreet club I belonged to back in those days."

"A discreet club? Never knew you were into that sort of thing. I'm learning all sorts of new things about you today."

" _Crowley._ It was an underground supper club, if you must know. They did weekly dinners, a different chef every week, in a little basement-level dining room down in the warehouse district. I never did write it up for the paper. Some things are better kept a bit secret, although I did discover several excellent chefs through it and then went on to review their more public offerings. It was all very exciting, you had to knock on an unmarked door and provide a different password every week to get in. The night of the explosion, someone – a policeman, I think – came and knocked on the door. He said there'd been an accident nearby and they were evacuating all of the buildings in the vicinity just to be on the safe side. We all had to evacuate very quickly, before dessert was even served. I'd been so looking forward to the crème brulée, and I never did get to try it… Anyway, I walked right past the explosion site. My car was parked in a lot a couple of blocks down, and it was the fastest way to get back there; I didn't even consider that it might not be the wisest idea. I remember I thought they were exaggerating about the seriousness of the incident, only to be surprised to find the place swarming with police and fire vehicles, although they seemed to have put out most of the flames by then."

"You could've walked right by me."

"I doubt it. I would have noticed you. You stand out in a crowd."

Crowley snorted in disbelief, although he found himself wondering just how close they had come to each other that night, months before they'd actually met face-to-face. It was entirely possible that he'd been inside the blown-out building, moments away from his fateful encounter with the snake, just as Aziraphale had passed by on the sidewalk outside, not a hundred feet away. Had he only gotten to the site five minutes later, or Aziraphale been evacuated from his club five minutes earlier, the whole strange, surreal course of their lives might have been so different as to be unrecognizable. Perhaps he might never have gone into the building, might never have set off the sequence of events that led to the genesis of the Serpent. Perhaps he and Aziraphale might have bumped into each other in their haste, mumbling embarrassed apologies before shaking hands and introducing themselves, and perhaps they might have shared a casual conversation and then become friends, and eventually more than friends, with no secrets to bar their way.

But on the other hand, there was a not-insignificant possibility that one or both of them might be dead, a victim of Zuigiber, Sable, or Chalke in their crusade against anyone who'd shown evidence of strange abilities. And besides, who was to say that Crowley wouldn't have developed powers eventually anyway, the way Aziraphale apparently had from his brief exposure?

Certainly, if the Serpent had never come to be, there would be hundreds, perhaps thousands by now, of people whose lives would be far worse, who would have been the victims of vicious and terrible crimes. _Aziraphale_ would most likely have been one of those victims, way back at the Armory.

No, he thought, any alternate pathways that they might have taken were too fraught with _what ifs_ and _maybes_ for even Agnes to predict, and you couldn't change the past anyway, even if you wanted to. This was the world they lived in, a world where the Serpent existed, where Aziraphale and Crowley had only met months later at the Times-Observer offices, where the whole long, strange, convoluted course of their relationship had led them to this moment right now, and it was perfect and exactly as it should be.

"Wait, did anyone know you were there? That you had developed powers? Is that why they kept kidnapping you?"

"I honestly don't think so. I think the first time they came after me truly was just petty retaliation for my poor review of Sable's restaurant. It's possible Zuigiber could have seen something that night at the church, I suppose, but they didn't seem interested or concerned about me at all last night; I think I was just meant to be bait, for you. Collateral damage."

"They won't be making _that_ mistake again, that's for sure."

"Do you think they'll talk? Sable and Zuigiber?" asked Aziraphale with a worried frown. "About my abilities, I mean. They both saw the sword."

"Doubt it. I don't think they'd want everyone knowing that there might be dozens of ordinary people around who might have powers. If they ever get out of jail, they might come after you again. But if they do, we'll deal with it."

"We'll look out for each other. How many of us do you think there are?"

"I'm not sure. If you're any indication, it's a slow process. I'm pretty sure I'm an exception to the rule, if there even are any rules, because I was _bitten_ and that accelerated the whole process somehow. Although whether it was the snake specifically, or just the direct-to-bloodstream approach, I still don't know. My eyes changed appearance in less than an hour, and then all the rest of my abilities pretty much showed up overnight. I think you and everyone else were exposed by, I don't know, inhalation I guess? Or radiation maybe. And it took longer, a lot longer, to manifest, and the progression was a lot slower. The more physical changes might happen first, like my eyes."

"It does make sense. I've been growing stronger over the past year or so, without really trying. I'm not the sort to spend time at the gymnasium, as you know, but I found that I could move the furniture in my flat - bookcases stuffed with books, my full bureau - and other heavy objects without much effort at all. I thought at first it was just all those books I've been lugging around when I volunteer at the library."

Crowley snorted, an image of Aziraphale walking around with two teetering stacks of books taller than he was, one balanced delicately on each hand, having suddenly taken up residence in his mind.

"It does seem rather silly in retrospect, doesn't it? But after meeting you – the Serpent, I mean – and Zuigiber, although the former was a much more pleasant experience, I must say – after realizing that there were other people out there with superhuman abilities, after realizing what was possible, I began to figure things out."

"Hold up a sec— if you're so strong, does that mean you didn't need my help at all that night at the Armory? Could you have, I dunno, just flexed and snapped those cuffs in half? Ripped the chain right out of the wall?"

Crowley wasn't sure how he felt about that possibility. On the one hand, it was never nice to feel extraneous. On the other hand, the image of an Aziraphale strong enough to snap steel with his bare hands was undeniably compelling. It would be reassuring, too, to know that Aziraphale could not be so easily restrained.

"No, I tried, believe me. I'm not _that_ strong. I managed to break free of the ropes last night, but metal cuffs and chains are much sturdier. And anyway, your solution was much more elegant."

"I'm not sure _elegant_ is the word I'd use to describe me doing weird things with my tongue and a padlock."

"Compelling, then. Strangely so."

"If you say so. No accounting for taste."

"My taste is impeccable, thank you very much."

"Sure, Angel. Whatever you say."

"What were we talking about again? Oh, right. You said that you thought that changes in appearance might manifest first. I think you might be right. My hair wasn't always this white, but to be honest I thought I was just getting old."

Now that Crowley thought back over the years, it _was_ true that Aziraphale's hair had gotten paler, shifting from a pale blond when they'd first met to its current, nearly white shade. It had been a gradual change, so gradual that he hadn't registered it as anything more than sun-bleaching or, as Aziraphale had mentioned, the inevitable effects of time and age.

"I like it," said Crowley, reaching over to run his fingers through the cloudy softness of it, from the lush curls at the crown to the downy bits at the nape of his neck. He'd always wanted to touch it, and now he finally could, as much as he liked. He still couldn't believe his luck. "Always have."

Aziraphale leaned into him, warm against his side.

"You flatter me. Gabriel's always saying that it makes me look old and that I should dye it."

"Gabriel's a wanker. And you could probably literally throw him across the room with one hand—," Crowley said, stopping short as a thought occurred to him. "Wait. I just realized something. They were both there. Gabriel and Beelzebub. I saw 'em. First reporters on the scene. Beat me to the scoop and everything."

"You're _right_. Gabriel was salty about Beelzebub beating him to the scene for weeks."

"Have you ever seen a person with eyes the color of Gabriel's? Or someone with acne scars on their face that look like the ones Beelzebub's got?"

"I've worked with Gabriel for a long time. Nearly fifteen years. Now that you mention it, his eyes _have_ become more vibrant and purple in that time. I always just thought he finally gave in to his vanity at some point and started wearing colored contacts, but I wasn't about to ask. He's always been ridiculously proud of the fact that someone once told him he had Liz Taylor's eyes."

"What do you think his secret power is going to turn out to be?"

"I can't imagine. Perhaps he knocks people senseless with the force of his ego."

"Ha! I guess it's also possible that he doesn't have any powers, or that they're still latent. I've no idea if the eyes mean he'll get them eventually, or if it's independent. Same goes for Beelzebub. There had to have been dozens of people at the site that night, all sorts of fire and police and hazmat crews, not to mention us reporters, and I haven't seen a thing, no rumors or anything even, suggesting that anyone inexplicably developed strange powers other than Frannie Williams. Well, and you. We can probably assume that the others that the Four Horse gang murdered had something going on as well, but that still leaves dozens of people unaccounted for. I can't imagine that at least some people wouldn't talk if they suddenly developed abilities. I mean, the first thing you learn as a reporter is that everyone just wants to talk about themselves given the opportunity, right? So there must be some variability in the effects. I'm guessing it didn't always take. Or it's also possible that a person's power could be so useless or esoteric that they'd never know they had one. Or it could require very specific circumstances. If you could, say, breathe underwater, you wouldn't know unless you inhaled while submerged, and most people would never do that. Argh. There's so many possibilities."

"I think all we can do is wait and see. At least, with any luck, Zuigiber and Sable and Chalke shouldn’t be able to kill anyone else. Although there's still Azrael…"

"That must have been him at the end there, right? Azrael?" asked Crowley, shuddering a bit at the memory of the cold, empty despair the mysterious presence had brought in its wake.

"I don't know who else it could have been. Invisibility is his power, then?"

"Among worse things, I'd be willing to bet."

"I don't think I should like to find out what else he's capable of. Oh! That reminds me. I did a little research of my own during the last couple of weeks. I had dug up some patent filings from years ago, because Carmine Zuigiber's name was associated with one of them, and I found a mention of our mysterious Mr. Azrael. He seems to have been some kind of high-level researcher at Panoptic Biotech a decade or so ago; he filed loads of patent applications, which isn't odd in and of itself, but a good number of them appear to have been redacted. He must have been working on something highly classified. And then around ten years ago the classified patent applications dried up completely, which makes me think Azrael was fired or maybe he quit, and whatever secret project he was working on was also terminated."

"The timing lines up with the warehouse explosion," said Crowley thoughtfully. "And remember, Sable said, _We were supposed to be the only ones._ Do you know what I think? I think they – Zuigiber and Sable and Chalke – were Azrael's project, only something went very wrong – maybe the explosion itself, or maybe something worse and the explosion was a cover-up – so Panoptic cut ties with him and swept it all under the rug. But they had to have known about it. I've suspected that they've been involved from the very beginning. We just need to find some proof."

"I don't know, Crowley. Maybe we just need to accept that some things are … ineffable, in the words of the mysterious Mr. Azrael."

"I don't buy that. There's no such thing as ineffability. There's always an answer, if you go down deep enough. You just have to ask the right questions."

"Are you sure you want to know the answers?"

"I have to try, Aziraphale. I need to know. It's personal. It's always been personal."

"Well, then, maybe we can figure it out. Together."

"It'll probably take years. And like you say, we probably won't like what we find. Are you sure you want to stick around for all that?"

"I will be here for as long as it takes, and for as long afterwards as you'll have me."

"Are you proposing a partnership then? An extension of our Arrangement?"

"Crowley, darling," said Aziraphale with a hint of exasperation, "don't you think we're _well_ beyond any silly arrangements now?"

"Are we?" 

Something wild and light was bubbling up in Crowley's chest.

"Of _course_ , you ridiculous serpent. Although, I _would_ dearly like to be partners, in every sense of the word. I want to be with you. I want to be a part of your life. Of both of your lives, if you'll have me."

"Course I'll have you, Angel. You only ever had to ask."

"Well, then. Shall we shake hands to seal the deal?"

Crowley sealed the deal in a much more satisfying way, by kissing him well and thoroughly.

"I'll introduce you to Tracy. You'll have to get a suit. Trust me, once you've put on one of her suits, you'll never go back to garden-variety spandex."

Aziraphale looked mildly nauseated at the thought of spandex. Crowley allowed himself a brief, glorious fantasy of Aziraphale's round bottom and sturdy thighs clad in a silver-and-white skintight suit.

"I don't know, Crowley," said Aziraphale skeptically. "Are you sure my regular clothing won't be adequate? I don't know how I feel about wearing something so revealing. Although yours does look very fetching, I have to admit."

"You're gonna get stains and rips all over your regular clothing in this line of business, you know. They'll probably never come out, and even if they do, you'll always know they were there. And if you're going to be running around with flaming weapons on the regular, something fireproof might not be a bad idea."

"You do make some very persuasive points, dear. And I suppose if I _must_ get a suit, I'd want the person who made this _sublime_ robe to make it."

"You can beg her for a robe of your own. You are _not_ stealing that one from me, Angel. Nuh-uh. No way."

"Good luck getting it back. I told you, I'm never taking it off."

"I bet I could have it off you in five minutes flat."

"Perhaps so, darling, but if recent experience is to be believed, I'd wager you'd be in no shape afterwards to stop me from reclaiming it."

Aziraphale, damn him, was probably right, and if his smug smile was any indication, he knew it.

"Well, I'll just have to keep trying then, won't I?"

"You're welcome to try any time you like."

They looked at each other and simultaneously burst into laughter. Crowley felt elated and silly and light as a feather.

"Where were we? Right. Suits."

"I could get a cape! I do like capes. Perhaps something fur-lined."

" _Fur-lined_? We're not living in the Arctic, Aziraphale."

"It's stylish!"

"I suppose you'll also want a bow tie and tartan, won't you?" sighed Crowley, and let it be. There were some arguments he knew he couldn't win. He'd leave it to Tracy to knock some sense into Aziraphale.

"Ooh, I hadn't even _considered_ tartan. Thank you, darling."

Crowley groaned. Aziraphale beamed at him.

"And learn from my mistakes, Angel. Give yourself a name, and make sure everyone knows what it is before the narrative gets out of hand. Something catchy, marketable. Otherwise they'll be calling you _Slitherman_ for the rest of your life."

" _Slitherman?_ Really?" Aziraphale giggled. "Although… it is rather catchy, you know."

"Yes, really. Don't you go getting any ideas now."

"Hmm," said Aziraphale thoughtfully, "what about the Principality? Or the Guardian of the Eastern Gate?"

"What do those things even _mean_?" asked Crowley, wincing. "Did you not hear what I just said about _catchy_ and _marketable_?"

"You know, dear. With the Garden and the wily serpent—"

Crowley cut him off.

"How about _Angel?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would have been shorter, except these boys kept insisting on kissing and getting distracted instead of talking about Important Plot Points, and who am I to deny them (and you, dear readers, hopefully) that happiness. It's been a slooooow, sloooow burn after all.
> 
> Only an epilogue to go after this!

**Author's Note:**

> You can reblog this fic [here](https://moondawntreader.tumblr.com/post/621414082443116544/im-thrilled-to-announce-that-the-first-two) if you like.
> 
> Come visit me [@moondawntreader](https://moondawntreader.tumblr.com) on tumblr!  
> Please see my [AO3 profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/profile) for additional contact info and permissions.


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